Blues
Forty Below Records · 28 August 2026
Eleven songs and forty-eight minutes, which for a blues record today counts as craftsman’s measure. “Take Me Back” (4:35) is the only track with a guest and the high point of the set: Luther Dickinson, co-founder of the North Mississippi Allstars, who had already backed Danielle Nicole on her 2015 album Wolf Den. His electric playing alternates scorch and hammer-down, and it’s the one time on the record that somebody from outside comes in and takes charge.
The road the rest of it takes is soul. “Memories” (5:47) is the longest piece and an old-fashioned ballad, sung at full force; Brandon Miller’s solo lets out just enough of the tension to keep the instruments from swamping the voice, and Jim Pugh’s keyboards do the same job from behind. Miller wrote most of the material and plays the rhythm guitar; Nicole plays electric bass, her instrument since the Trampled Under Foot days, the Kansas City family band she started in.
Tony Braunagel produced, and he brings the economy you’d expect from the Phantom Blues Band drummer who has worked with Taj Mahal: backing singers Melodye Perry and Maxayne Maraguchi appear on “Gaslight” (4:15) and “Tug of War” (3:46) and nowhere else. There’s Bill Withers material, and “The Same Love That Made Me Laugh” (3:30), from his +’Justments of 1974, is the shortest cut and the clearest statement of what Nicole is after here, which is measure before force.
Three of the eleven tracks had already been out as singles (“Gaslight” in April, “Tug of War” in May, “Take Me Back” in July) — on a forty-eight-minute record, a third of it given away in advance. The running order pays for it: the album’s only guest appearance sits at track two, and the forty minutes that follow have nothing of that calibre to offer. “Chameleon” (4:37) and “Piper” (4:05) are where that tells most, and the title track arrives at the end as a quiet close.
Eleven tracks, forty-eight minutes, Forty Below Records, 28 August. It’s Danielle Nicole’s fourth album; the previous one, The Love You Bleed, is from January 2024, and Cry No More (2018) earned her a Grammy nomination.
Rating: 7.3/10
Text by Enric Vilaplana