Audio Cassette review:
G. Love & Special Sauce - Coast to Coast Motel

G. Love & Special Sauce - Coast to Coast Motel

Band: G. Love & Special Sauce Title: Coast to Coast Motel Rating: Release Date: 19 September, 1995 Media: Audio Cassette Tracks: 1: Sweet Sugar Mama 2: Leaving the City 3: Nancy 4: Kiss and Tell 5: Chains #3 6: Sometimes 7: Everybody 8: Soda Pop 9: Bye Bye Baby 10: Tomorrow Night 11: Small Fish 12: Coming Home

Editoral Review Love, known to more skeptical ears as 23-year-old blue-eyed devil Garrett Dutton, shone briefly as hip-hop's great white hope when he released a debut record that paired blues-based playing with vocals that approximated rap. Modern-day bluesman G. Though he was initially grouped with acts like Beck and Soul Coughing--pale faces who flirted with hip-hop but stuck to rock esthetics--we know now that young Master Dutton has far less in common with those inventive postmodernists than he does with, say, Jamie Walters, the pretty-boy pop dullard of Beverly Hills 90210 fame. Coast to Coast Motel, the singer/guitarist's second shot with his bass and drums ensemble Special Sauce, does not even grant us the minor pleasures of his debut's "blues rap" novelty. This time, Mr. G focuses primarily on the R&B sounds of New Orleans, where the band recorded the album. That G. Love counts John Hammond Jr. an inspiration is telling: What Coast to Coast Motel offers is bratty suburban recreations of Hammond's competent but uninspired blueblood appropriations of classic blues music. New Special Sauce tunes like "Kiss & Tell" and "Bye Bye Baby" are absolutely fine but inauthentic and unnecessary given the breadth of great blues already available to motivated listeners. And any college-educated kid, like Garrett, who insists on singing with the slurred drawl of elderly sharecroppers needs to be slapped silly. --Roni Sarig .. You can see a complete list of all G. Love & Special Sauce discography, or go back to the G. Love & Special Sauce tabs