Longtime artist opens the vault

Luther Russell has been writing songs for a long time. His first band was with Jakob Dylan, son of legendary artist Bob Dylan. He then became the lead singer of an indie band called The Freewheelers, who released two albums before disbanding in 1996. After that, he decided to go solo. Over his twenty-year solo career, Russell has released five studio albums as well as one EP and has toured with prominent artists such as Johnny Cash, Etta James and Tom Petty. He also dipped into production, working on albums for several indie artists as well as for The Relationship, a side project of Weezer guitarist Brian Bell. He hadn’t released any new material since 2011, until now. Russell has decided to grace the listeners’ presence with Selective Memories, a two-disc gold mine of demos and unreleased material. All in all, there are forty tracks to enjoy.

As expected, Russell realized that for such a massive album to come out, he’d have to showcase many different styles of music, which ended up being exactly what he did. The first disc is a no-nonsense Freewheelers-type garage rock album, where Russell showcases his gritty vocals. The second disc, however, is much more relaxed and eclectic. There are acoustic moments, there are electronic moments, and in the case of “Friend Song,” there’s even a Brazilian-style Bossanova track. And to Russell’s credit, he has managed to make all of it sound good, which is not an easy feat.

It’s impossible for there to really be a ‘drawback’ to an album of this length. If there’s any, it would simply be that the album is too long. The modern American attention span when it comes to music is very short, and so people who wouldn’t put in the time to listen to the record all the way through would sadly miss out on some of the real gems near the album’s end. But then again, Russell most likely released this album for the benefit of his long-term fans as opposed to attracting new ones. And for those who have stuck around, it’s a product that does well.