SOULIVE — Rubber Soulive (review)

SOULIVE — Rubber Soulive album cover Album · 2010 · Funk Jazz Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
darkshade
Soulive plays funky, instrumental soul-jazz versions of Beatles songs. Clever title for the album. The songs translate well to Soulive's sound. It's the original trio here, no horns, no guests. Just Soulive. They play a lot of the hits. The band blends the tunes so well with their own style, you sometimes forget you're listening to, essentially, a Beatles cover album, and really just listening to a great Soulive record.

"Drive My Car" is a nice laid back soul-jazz excursion, and "Taxman" really sounds cool in this context. Eric Krasno handles a lot of the vocal melodies on guitar, and plays them with such feel, that you could just sing along with them. "In My Life" and "Eleanor Rigby" get a real jazzy treatment here; the latter is really cool, really fast drum beat used here.

"I Want You (She's So Heavy)" is probably the best song here, mainly because this song just works for a band like Soulive. Great guitar parts, organ, plenty of groovy bass. This is also the closest I've heard Soulive get to a 'rock' sound.

They make "Come Together" real funky. I heard Chapter 2 (One of Krasno's side projects) play this song in a similar way to how it is here, when they opened up for Umphrey's McGee. That was good, but this version might be just a little better. The best version was Soulive playing this live when I saw them last year. I think this song is a staple in their live shows right now. Great way to cover this song.

The rest of the album is fantastic. Other highlights are "Something", which gets the soulful treatment, "Help" is nice and jazzy, and the album ends, fittingly, with "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", and man does Krasno make his guitar weep. He has so much soul in his playing, he puts John and George to shame. Yea, I said it!

Surely a good album, and if you like The Beatles and wonder how Soulive handle their songs, this one will probably turn you on. The classic Soulive sound is here, so this could be a good album to start with them, but I'd say get one of their other albums first before getting this.
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