But as the years passed, he became increasingly focused on writing songs and performing them at any watering hole that would have him, in time becoming part of the city’s burgeoning folk scene. Rateliff spent the next 10 years on the loading dock of a trucking company before becoming a gardener and getting married along the way. Not long afterward, he followed some local missionaries to Denver, thereby escaping what he describes as “the Midwestern lifestyle of working and growing up too fast.” He soon outgrew his childhood understanding of religion, realizing that “there are so many books out there besides that one,” as his worldview expanded exponentially. Rateliff left school after his dad passed away at the end of 7th grade, left his home in the small town of Herman, Missouri, where his future would’ve likely involved endless shifts in a nearby plastic factory and worked as a janitor for a high school. Indeed, he hears distinct evocations of The Band on his new album, and he was listening to “TB Sheets” and the rest of Morrison’s The Bang Masters as he was writing it. These moments of revelry are also revelatory, singling out two of Rateliff’s biggest influences. In live performance, Rateliff and the Sweats have been known to mash together ‘S.O.B.’ and The Band’s ‘The Shape I’m In’ as the double-barreled climax of their sets (you can find it on YouTube), the frontman high-stepping and boogalooing across the stage with controlled abandon, bearing a striking resemblance in his physicality to the young Van Morrison. Thematically, the song is the album’s linchpin-partly a rebuke, partly a cry of defiance, ‘S.O.B.’ is the “fuck it all” anthem of a blue-collar kid from the Heartland whose conditioned idea of therapy is a shot and a beer chaser, and then another round, on the way to sweet oblivion. ‘S.O.B.’ sits at the dead center of the album, between the brutally honest confessionals ‘I’ve Been Failing’ and ‘Wasted Time’. The difference between the two albums is that the Nights Sweats’ funkiness insulates the starkly confessional nature of Rateliff’s songs while at the same time underscoring their emotional extremes. But when you delve beneath the rawboned surface of the new album’s wall-rattling presentation, with its deep-gut grooves, snaky guitars, churning Hammond and irresistible horns, you’ll find that same sensitive, introspective dude, who bravely tells it like it is, breaking through his reticence to expose often harsh truths about the life he’s lived, the people he’s hurt and the despair he’s struggled with. Those who were beguiled by In Memory of Loss, Rateliff’s folky, bittersweet 2010 Rounder album, will be in for an initial shock when they spin Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats. But as this gifted multi-instrumentalist honors the legacy of the legendary Memphis label, he’s also setting out into audacious new territory. So it’s entirely fitting that the self-titled album will bear the iconic logo of Stax Records, because at certain moments Rateliff seems to be channeling soul greats like Otis Redding and Sam & Dave. You don’t just listen to this record-you experience it. This stunning work isn’t just soul stirring, it’s also soul baring, and the combination is absolutely devastating to behold. Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats practically explodes with deep, primal and ecstatic soulfulness. But as this gifted multi-instrumentalist honors
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