Detroit Cobras
Tied & True

If by any chance we still needed some confirmation that there must be something strange and different in the air of Detroit, Michigan, that enchants and intoxicates, making anyone who picks up a guitar or a microphone a dangerous musical mutant ready to explode in raw, furious energy, then with the latest album from the Detroit Cobras we'd have yet another proof.

After almost three years since their last work (the veryyyyy beautiful "Baby" from 2005) and replacing in fans' expectations that "Lost and Found" announced by Sympathy but never released, "Tied & True" has been released - once again by Bloodshot in the USA and by Rough Trade in Europe. The debate among American reviewers of the "Midwest's finest cover band" is open and revolves around usual themes like cover yes, cover no, why don't they write their own songs (only one in five albums), etc. but in my opinion, this topic is misleading and guitarist Miss Mary Ramirez (nee Restrepo) is right when she states in an interview with Plan B Magazine, "We're like the jukebox we wish existed. I know some people feel you're less valid somehow if you don't write your material, but (...) at the moment of performance, who wrote the song is completely irrelevant. All that matters is whether that performance touches you and convinces you." Wise words. 

This splendid album indeed offers us another fantastic ride - a bit short as usual but intense, raw, dirty, and thick enough as always - of 13 new virtually unknown R&B gems or almost, that our Rachel Nagy and Mary Ramirez (nee Restrepo) have gone to unearth from some jukebox buried under cases of beer and whisky in some disreputable crack house of the Motor City and now generously share with us in performances made of scratchy melodies, one with her unmistakable voice and the other with her strumming from girl band + bar band + garage band + Detroit sound and visceral love for R&B. From the obscurity of forgotten songs, Ladies and Gentlemen, here's yet another masterpiece of interpretative flair from these two ladies... There are also others playing, sure, but those two, and especially the blonde Rachel, excuse us, we celebrate her a bit more, because it is true and very true that she has "one of the sexiest, most powerful voices in Rock 'N' Roll today", as a fan rightly wrote in the I ROCK CLEVELAND blog. Described in American reviews as a "human tornado," in the videos circulating (youtube docet) our voluptuous Rachel seems rather stationary on stage, despite the bad girl poses she flaunts in photos, but listening to her voice on the tracks of "Tied & True" and closing your eyes, you cannot help but be carried away by these gems of pure and absolute rock, each more beautiful than the next, rhythmic and engaging, bad and sweet, practically perfect, where - if in their other works I could express preferences - I don't know which is the most beautiful: could it be the subdued start of "Try Love"? Or "The hurt's all gone"? The sweet and poignant "The Hurts All Gone" and "Only To Other People"? Or the rhythmic "Puppet on a string" and "As long as I have you"? Or the rolling "It's my delight" and "If you don't think" or maybe the aggressive "On a monday" or perhaps the rousing "Green light," that wraps it all up magnificently? I don’t know and I don't want to know: I listen again and again because we can never get enough of Rachel's vocal scratches...