SOLEDAD BROTHERS - Rolling Stone

At their best, Soledad Brothers recall the Rolling Stones when Mick and Keith were fresh-faced bluesheads in the mid-Sixties: The prolific Detroit foursome kicks out solid, harmonica-laced blues riffs without sounding derivative or cheesily nostalgic. "Downtown Paranoia Blues" is a distortion-happy tribute to no-good women and the men who love them. "Got that paranoia and it's spinning in my head," drawls singer Johnny Walker, with a little irony: "I could see her laying down in half a million beds." Guitars whine convincingly over the down-at-the-heels piano ballad "Crying Out Loud (Tears of Joy)," and the meandering, ten-minute-plus hidden track, "Dirty Beef in C," is full of psychedelic sitar twangs sure to win over the stoner contingent. Meet the Motor City's newest hitmakers. - Lauren Gitlin / Rolling Stone

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SOLEDAD BROTHERS - The Onion

Detroit's Soledad Brothers started life as one of those bluesy guitar-and-drum duos that seem to spring up like weeds in local garage-rock scenes, and though they've since added another guitarist and the occasional guest player, Soledad Brothers still cling to the raw, rootsy sound that stripped-down duos do best. The band's new album, The Hardest Walk, traffics in swamp-bound sounds in an urban setting, as on "Downtown Paranoia Blues," which is all tin-shack choodle and uncontrollable jealousy, set in the dank atmosphere of a coldwater flat. Even "Sweet And Easy," the Soledads' stab at a sultry midtempo R&B moaner, doesn't sound too far removed from their cello-aided, dissonant creep-out "Let Me Down," and when they launch into the surging, poppy freak-beat exercise "Good Feeling," lo-fi rust keeps the song from sounding fully positive. The Hardest Walk's key song may be the minute-long avant-noise fragment "White Jazz," which acknowledges the differences between Soledad Brothers and the musical primitivists they borrow from. The Soledads grapple with self-consciousness, and overcome it whenever they slip music past their own heads and into their bones. - The Onion