Grace Potter- Mother Road
Label: Fantasy
Producer: Eric Valentine
Folks, this latest Grace Potter record is a frigging rock & roll delight, and an instant entrant in the legendary canon of all-time great road albums. A fully-fledged concept album following the gypsy adventures of a runaway-turned-lifelong drifter, Mother Road is a joyous bolt of swaggering rock heat and classic musical storytelling. I’ve long bemoaned the criminal levels at which Potter has been overlooked in the overall music space throughout her diverse catalog to date. She deserves to be what women like Linda Ronstadt and Sheryl Crow were to their generations. But she has honestly never sounded so joyously passionate and in her element as she does on this record. It only makes her already fabulous voice sound that much more encapsulating. Every chapter of this story unveils its own unique roots rock flavor with it. The opening title track is classic guitar-rock euphoria, while “Good Time” positively swelters in all its bluesy, Rolling Stones-recalling glory. “Little Hitchhiker” is a sweet and splendid slice of acoustic country-rock, while “Lady Vagabond” is an absolutely trippy and bewildering splash of Spaghetti-Western that words simply cannot do justice. And then, there is the side-splitting grand finale in “Masterpiece”, a hilariously cinematic piece of rambling, frenetic piano rock opera that feels like a Freddie Mercury-Bob Dylan lovechild. There are very few recent albums that have simply entertained me in the way that Mother Road has. It’s going to be played on repeat in my library for some time, and it should be in yours too. Rock on, Ms. Potter.
Track Listing:
- “Mother Road” (Grace Potter)
- “Truck Stop Angels” (Potter)
- “Ready Set Go” (Potter)
- “Good Time” (Potter)
- “Little Hitchhiker” (Potter, Natalie Hemby)
- “Lady Vagabond” (Potter)
- “Rose Colored Rearview” (Potter, Cary Barlowe, Hillary Lindsey, Margaret McRee)
- “All My Ghosts” (Potter, Barlowe, Lindsey, McRee)
- “Futureland” (Potter)
- “Masterpiece” (Potter)
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