Stream: Rival Sons, ‘Back in the Woods’

Kevin Bronson on December 6th, 2018

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Long Beach-bred quartet Rival Sons are damn near unrivaled when it comes gritty, old-school hard rock — you know, the stuff that bulges with outsized blues riffs that make hair fly and rooms shake. Over five albums since 2009, the quartet has often sounded as if they’re soundtracking a bar brawl, even if they’re far too tight, instrumentally and vocally, to be lumped in with bar bands.

They have an apt name for their music and it’s the title of their next album: “Feral Roots.” The quartet — Jay Buchanan (vocals), Scott Holiday (guitar), Dave Beste (bass guitar) and Mike Miley (drums) — has announced the album will be out Jan. 25 via Low Country Sound/Atlantic Records. It was recorded with producer Dave Cobb (Sturgill Simpson, Shooter Jennings, Zac Brown Band, Brandi Carlile, among others) at RCA Studio A in Nashville and the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama.

Buchanan recently moved to Tennessee, and his new surroundings informed the tenor of the record. “With all the stimuli we’re constantly receiving these days, I think a lot of people have a desire to live with more freedom and simplicity,” he says. “There’s a longing for your truer nature to prevail, and to reclaim some sort of wildness.”

Behold their strain of primal.

||| Stream: “Back in the Woods”