Customer Reviews

Baby

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I first heard the The Detroit Cobras in the fall of 2005 during an NPR review of the year's 10 best albums. You know how it is...you know the good stuff when you hear it? Well, they had it. I found the album (Bloodshot Records), listened to the sample track, and ordered. Meanwhile, I learned a little about them.

Talk about colorful histories. Formed by guitarist Steve Shaw in 1995, the band emerged from the Detroit Garage Rock scene as the best cover band in the Midwest, specializing in Shaw's penchant for forgotten R&B classics. They wrote fresh, updated arrangements, and what do you know, Soul suddenly found a way to rock hard.

Shaw left the group, but the program stayed the same, reaching its peak with the third album, 2005's "Baby." For my money, it's the best retro-R&B album to ever hit the street.

It doesn't matter that the band is a literal revolving door of musicians, hardly ever the same from one performance to the next. The two mainstays, vocalist Rachel Nagy, and guitarist Maribel Restrepo, were the only constants, but Nagy alone would have been enough to carry things.

Once-upon-a-time an exotic dancer, she's right at home in dark, smoke-filled cafes. Her driven style penetrates to the core. She's edgy, loud, slutty, and hypnotic. This is a hard woman, strong, with voice to match. Grrr! I'd take her home in a heartbeat if I wasn't afraid she'd slap me around too much. For now, I'll settle for "Baby's" 20 vibrant tracks and keep them where they've been for the past three years: at the top of my play list.

Sample these first: "Weak Spot" and "Silver and Gold"

Art Tirrell is the author of 2007's, "The Secret Ever Keeps", set on and below the surface of Lake Ontario.

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for all those who love the detroit cobras this album is terriffic. i picked up for import price without giving it a second thought, i had to have this album after hearing the two previous releases. this album doesn't dissapoint at all. life love and leaving will probably always be my favorite, but baby is well worth the money.

This is, not to mince words, an unbelievably great, rootsy, garage-y record...Imagine the choicest, semi-obscure R&B chestnuts done up by a smokin' combo of some of Detroit's finest musicians, and sung by an incredibly hot, soulful frontwoman...has to be heard to be believed. And, the originals by the group are mighty tasty, too.

The Detroit Cobras are a welcome band in the rock cirquit. This has nothing to do with their originality. A Rock 'n Roll band doing R&B songs is something we've known since Elvis. No points there. It has more to do with the enthusiasm with which they revive this tradition in R&R. For decades the music has been dominated by bands producing only original material. It has become the standard. Often R&R acts seem to take their selves too serious and forget the fun and romance in the music. The fun of playing and the romance of paying due to your hero's. Points here for the Cobras.

Additional points go to their choice of songs and their deliverance. Although the Cobras sound like limited musicians in the best of R&R tradition, they sound convincing. They churn out mean versions of Clarence Carter's Slipping Around, Gary "US" Bonds' I Wanna Holler and Willie Dixons' Insane Asylum. Al sung with one of the sexiest voices in R&R today. Although they dig deep into the R&B Library for their songs, the Cobra's sound well at home in the year 2006 and the garage revival of recent years. One just wishes the White Stripes could sound this fresh and exiting at times.

The Cobras newest record is just what I expected...the same old Detroit Cobras I've always loved. This band does'nt change...but that's fine by me.

"Baby" is a record filled with the same old heavy r&b they've always delivered. And as usual....it's naughty, raunchy, and most importantly fun. What really makes "Baby" special is the "Seven Easy Pieces" EP that makes up the end of the album. To be honest, the EP is better than the record itself.

Pick this up and play it loud loud loud. You won't be dissappointed.

Every Time I'm wary to buy a Cobra's Album - I like to listen to albums before I buy them, and knowing that the Cobra's usually re-work other songs (and make them ENTIRELY their own), I was apprehensive about getting an album with a re-worked version of one of their already re-worked songs (cha-cha twist).

Needless to say - just like every time I buy a Cobra's album, all wariness is beat to hell upon the first listen, and I find myself cracking a Pabst and lighting a spliff to the Cobra Audio Venom - Deliciously Deadly.

Singer-songwriters have a lot to answer for, as ever since their advent there has been such an emphasis on original material that the occasional cover version only creeps into many repertoires as a kind of novelty. Criminally, many talented and creative musicians have wasted their talents on the mediocre songs that their keyboard player and his flatmate's brother brought to the group practices in the name of art. It wasn't always so. The first albums by the Beatles and the Stones consisted largely of covers and Elvis Presley barely wrote a song in his life. In the blues and soul booms of the sixties, bands were judged by how well they could play well known standards of each genre.

Thankfully, some bands eschew the profitability of songwriting royalties for the integrity of keeping alive the music they love through their own reinterpretations, and one of the very best of these are the Detroit Cobras. They are not entirely slavish in their adherence to this policy however, and on this album there is one rocking, dirty track called Hot Dog that founder members Rachel and Mary wrote with longtime friend of the band Greg Cartwright, former guitarist in the Oblivians, who helped produce and guests on the record, and who later joined the band.

Otherwise, it's business as usual with a collection of the weird and wonderful from all corners of their record libraries, with a number of title changes and wrongly credited authorships just to throw researchers of the scent.

Clarence Carter's Slipping Around kicks off the album, and then comes Gary US Bond's I Wanta Holler (But The Town's Too Small). This has become one of his most popular works, though it wasn't granted a release in 1962 and had to wait for a CD collection before it saw the light of day, making it a perfect choice for the Cobras to champion. Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand is a standard that was probably first recorded in an earlier variant by Blind Boy Fuller. The Animals recorded another variant, as did Bob Dylan, but the source of this version is an Atlantic single by Hoagy Lands, where it was credited to producer Bert Berns and Wes Farrell, the team who wrote Hang On Sloopy. Stax Records in Memphis provided Weak Spot, as recorded by Ruby Johnson. More obscure is the Northern Soul number Everybody's Going Wild, originally by the International Kansas City Playboys featuring Lee Curtis. They released it twice under different names in 1967, having recorded it for Jack Taylor's New York label Rojac, but it is thought that they went to Detroit to make it.

Betty Harris's Mean Man and Irma Thomas's It's Raining were both written by Allen Toussaint, a Detroit Cobras favourite. Bobbie Smith and the Dreamgirls were signed to Ira Mack and Tom King's Big Top label, and released Now You're Gone on the flipside of Don't Break My Heart in 1962, without changing the world significantly.

A false trail is laid for Just Can't Please You, which they credit to Billie Jean Horton, a fascinating lady who outlived two famous husbands, Hank Williams and Johnny Horton, and who did write a song called I Just Can't Please You, but the song the Cobras have covered here was by Jimmy Robins, who released it on Impression and then on Jerhart in 1966.

The Five Royales are another big Detroit Cobras' favourite band, and their original version of The Real Thing was written by trailblazing guitarist Lowman Pauling in 1959. Baby Help Me is a Bobby Womack song recorded by Percy Sledge. Finally, Cha Cha Twist is a return to a song they first covered on their 1998 album Mink Rat Or Rabbit. Adapted from Hank Ballard's The Twist, it was first recorded by Brice Coefield and the Untouchables, and was re-recorded for a Coca-Cola Diet Coke advert (who one might have thought would have preferred The Real Thing).

The line up for this record is Rachel Nagy (impossibly cool vocals), Mary Restrepo (rhythm guitar, backing vocals, attitude) and on this record Steve Nawara (subversive guitar), propelled by the rhythm powerhouse that is Joe Mazzola (bass) and Kenny Tudrick (drums). Should there not be room for a live band in your lounge, this is the next best thing.

N.B. This is the import version. For a version that also includes Seven Easy Pieces see Baby

Wow!...this is my first Detroit Cobras album, and wow...
I read that this band basically does covers of other people's songs, but personally, I don't recognize any of the songs, so it's all new to me. Rachel Nagy is soulful, rocking and sexy. The guitars and rhythm section are top notch. 2 thumbs WAY up!!

The best rekkid I have heard in many moons. Listen to some cuts on their my Space Page. Don't worry -- the whole disk is just as awesome. Get it! See 'em live!

I had been wanting to get a cd from The detroit Cobras for quite a while, but never did. Now I kick myself for not getting one sooner. I love this cd. Rachel's voice is rough, but smooth. I had never heard of the songs before, so they are all new to me. I would highly recommend this.