NICKI BLUHM
Toby's Song
(Little Knickers; 2008)

Sometimes, artists with staying power close in on a classic style, where the challenge to the musician is in the limitations they set on themselves. It can be limitations on the instrumentation, or even on the notes they play and sing, where they're forced to make decisions based on their desire to match the particular style. Look at Elvis Costello on King of America, which he recorded well into his career with a band of Nashville pros; or Cat Power's latest two discs, where she's backed by original soul music players from Memphis.

This phenomenon is part of the reason that Nicki Bluhm's debut CD, Toby's Song, is such an amazing disc. She has tapped into the country folk and blues side of rock music that came up in the West Coast in the 1960s and 70s with Laurel Canyon artists like CSNY, Joni Mitchell, and bands like the Byrds. Her songs of love and loss, made real with metaphors taken from California's natural beauty, are backed up by acoustic and electric guitars, slide guitar, organ, bass, and drums.

Nicki's voice is sultry and it sways and floats along with the beat, weaving around and cutting through the guitars. She sings with a steady confidence. Her voice has an organic timbre that I'd love to hear while sitting around a campfire. The musicianship of Nicki's band makes me think there must be a Nashville refuge somewhere in San Francisco where the exiles from Country Music USA are hiding out, breathing the Pacific air and jamming with singers like Nicki Bluhm. In fact more than half of the band is made up of professional musicians with years of recording and touring experience who hooked up with Nicki and her guitarist Deren Ney to record this record during their down time in the city.

Nicki wrote six of the eleven tracks on Toby's Song, adding two cover songs, two songs written by Ney, and one written by her husband Tim Bluhm (Mother Hips, Skinny Singers). The songs range from tender, gentle love songs like “Down the Beach” and “Love in California,” to more 70's style rock jams, with “Keep it Loose” sounding very Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac and “I'm Your Woman” giving Nicki a chance to show a sassy, Bonnie Rait-inspired side. On “Footsteps,” they even veer into some avant garde territory. It's an unsettling, dirgy jam driven by a fuzzed out bass line that lurches and splatters across the stereo. By the end of the disc, as if we needed another reason to fall totally in love with Nicki, she duets with Tim on a cover of Kenny Loggins' “Danny's Song,” and the feel-good summertime campfire vibe is absolutely perfected.

Fans of neo-West Coast folk rockers like Emily Jane White, Or, the Whale, and Port O'Brien should definitely get in on the ground floor of this professional quality debut.

[Jeff Bissell]


[STREAM] Nicki Bluhm: Various Tracks