Customer Reviews

Soul Parade

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
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"Soul Parade" takes Jesse DeNatale's journey into interstellar overdrive. Don't get me wrong: "Shangri-La West" is truly great, but "Soul Parade" defies superlatives. The legendary guitarist Andres Segovia wrote: "A song on a piano is a discourse; on a cello, an elegy; on a guitar, a song is just a song." In "Soul Parade" the piano dominates, as if the troubadour, having found a welcoming court, could stop traveling and give a rest to his portable instrument. Why, in this splendid court a grand piano is put at his disposal. So the troubadour atypically sits down, and no longer writes songs, but... discourses. Yet he is made of such golden stuff, he is so pure at heart, his "discourses" are not pompous, or boring. Just more profound and resonant, but as moving as ever, more than ever, perhpas. For that is the point: DeNatale's songs can be happy or sad, funny or haunting, but always involving. Listening to his songs is a participatory experience for the audience: they move us. And there lies the difference: there is so much soul in them, it spills over into the audience. This is a work of genius and compassion at the same time.

Soul Parade is an incredible album of imemense depth and will be enjoyed by anyone who loves music. Shangri la West is fecking rad as well.

This is more a note of appreciation than a review. I find myself returning to this CD again and again as a paliative to the pain my country seems wedded to at present. The phrase may have lost some of its power from sentimental abuse, but I'll still insist this is a "life-affirming" work of the first order. It dances and whirls, roughly breathing one man's vision of America's streets, and my goodness... he's smiling! I'll venture that you will too as you're caught in these twelve carny spells - cast as shrewd witchery of the Waits/Springsteen order - yet identifiably now, the welcome voice of Jesse De Natale. Thanks.... now everybody dive in.

Simply, this and Shangri-la West are all time personal favorites. Friends I've recommended JD to have, for whatever reason, not made the same connection. Similiar, I suppose, to an old friend who insisted years ago that Chris Deburgh was the best musician of all time, to which I responded "Huh?"

JD is equal parts nostalgia, joy, regret, admiration and love...plus humor. He's a gentle ride over Northern California rolling hills early on a weekend morning.

Share him with others. But, enjoy him as a private pleasure whether they share your joy or not.

What a voice! Such a wordsmith! Jesse DeNatale is a font of seasoned musical wisdom that puts me in mind of a blend of Waits with a little less gravel in his throat and L. Wainwright III's masterful guitar & very personal lyrics on the Last Man on Earth CD. DeNatale's piano & guitar skills are a lovely match for his succinctly apt & deceptively simple lyrics. Catch the banjo (Kurt Stevenson's) intro on "Montgomery Street"... and the lap slide guitar (also Kurt Stevenson) paired with DeNatale's harmonica on "Nightingale". At once contempletive and catchy, this CD is a marvel.

This is a cd one listens to, than listens again, and again...... each time hearing something more wonderful. Buy this, I promise you will not be sorry

Three years after his debut release, "Shangri-La West," DeNatale returns with a terrific set of folk-rock and roots hybrids that intertwine the singer-songwriter basics of Dylan and Springsteen with the emotional vocal waver of Steve Forbert, the sing-song lilt of Northwest folk troubadour Jim Page, the streetwise soul of Willy DeVille, and the rough bowery charms of Tom Waits.

DeNatale's songs share a certain melodic percussiveness with other piano-based writers, but where someone like Randy Newman is wry and sharply satirical, DeNatale is more fantastical and abstract. "Shine Your Light" and "Montgomery St." count upon the sort of march-time employed by Waits in the mid-80s, with the latter's evocation of San Francisco's people and places dramatically augmented by a few Springsteen-like vocal wails. "Dreamer's Holiday" winningly combines clarinet and lap steel guitar with a doo-wop melody and a vocal reminiscent of Louis Armstrong. "Nightingale" is filled with Dylanesque imagery, but in a more florid and less biting repose. The album's tin-pan alley styled title track would have fit nicely on Nilsson's "Nilsson Schmilsson," or perhaps in a dream sequence from a Shirley Temple movie.

DeNatale nominally considers himself a folk artist, but he's folk in the conceptual sense of writing songs that are emotionally close to home and personal, rather than as an acoustic troubadour. There's a folk element to his singing, but with a full band and the CD's carefully tuned production, it's hard to imagine these songs stripped down to their singer-songwriter-with-a-guitar essence. On his second try, DeNatale's come up with a great set of songs, and the sympathetic band of players to help get them across. [©2006 hyperbolium dot com]