Brian Olive/Soledad Brothers in the current issue of Mojo

The current issue of MOJO with Kings Of Leon on the cover includes the free "ROOTS, FRIENDS AND INFLUENCES" CD, 14 tracks that influenced, inspired and are admired by the Kings Of Leon. The CD includes music by Woody Guthrie, Merle Haggard, The Kills, My Morning Jacket, and the SOLEDAD BROTHERS, BRIAN OLIVE's old band.

BRIAN OLIVE'S self-titled debut album is out on Alive Naturalsound on June 23rd. The RECORD RELEASE PARTY is set for June 27 @ The Northside Tavern - Cincinnati OH.

BRIAN OLIVE : Other Music exclusive advance download

BRIAN OLIVE self-titled debut is now available as an exclusive advance download from Other Music

This talented musician has served time in the Greenhornes and the Soledad Brothers, two underrated garage rock bands from Cincinnati, Ohio. Brian Olive's self-titled solo album is a pretty impressive self-produced affair that takes the trashy, rollicking, Brit invasion revivalist sound of his former groups and then injects a healthy dose of bluesy soul backbeats and N'awlins horns to the mix. There's also a nice haze of gentle acid-washed psychedelia to his production that reminds me of some fellow '60s revivalists across the pond, the (Band of) Bees. Tracks like "Echoing Light," "See Me Mariona" and "There Is Love" are great stoner, psych-pop nuggets while "Calling All Around" and "Ida Red" are letter perfect Beggars Banquet-styled blues rock, reminiscent of Olive's former bands. But it's songs like "Stealin" and "Jubilee Line" that seal the deal, impressive rollicking jaunts that benefit from his impressive horn arrangements and a propulsive foot stomping backbeat. A great, solid listen from start to finish, if you've been diggin' on the sounds of King Khan, Brian Jonestown Massacre or the aforementioned Bees, you'll definitely want to spend some time with this record. Tip!! - Duane Harriott

Ex-Greenhorne/Soledad Brother Goes Solo

Ex-Greenhorne/Soledad Brother Goes Solo
-- Mike Breen / City Beat

Brian Olive, a founding member of The Greenhornes and later a member of the Soledad Brothers (under the stage-name Oliver Henry), is releasing a self-titled solo album on June 23. The CD will be put out by Alive Records, also home to Cincy's Buffalo Killers.

The CD was recorded in Cincinnati and features a lot of local guests, including The Greenhornes' Craig Fox, original Greenhornes keysman Jared McKinney, Holly and Tori Kadish and Mike Wienel of The High and Low and drummer Dan Allaire, a former local who has since played with the Brian Jonestown Massacre and other west coast bands. Olive plans to tour the album with a band assembled from some of the guest players.

The album's sound is described as a "multicolored affair that takes musical and lyrical cues from the British psychedelic sixties, as well as the soul-pop hit factories of Memphis, and wanders through the erstwhile streets of the Ninth Ward."

Listen to the first track leaked from the album, "There Is Love," a tasty, narcotic slice of dreamy Psychedelia.

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

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

SOLEDAD BROTHERS - Washington Post

Friday, March 31, 2006; WE10

SOLEDAD BROTHERS"The Hardest Walk"Alive

ORIGINALLY a Detroit neo-blues twosome that was inevitably compared with the White Stripes, the Soledad Brothers have expanded significantly, and not just in personnel. The band's new album, "The Hardest Walk," features four players -- only three officially Soledad sibs -- and a style that employs the blues as a foundation rather than as a straitjacket.

The album opens with a brace of bluesy rockers, "Truth or Consequences" and "Downtown Paranoia Blues," but these days that's not all the Brothers can do. Thanks in large part to singer-guitarist Johnny Walker's soulful delivery, the Soledads are just as convincing when they stroll as when they chug, and such psychedelic numbers as "Loup Garou" and the sitar-meets-pedal-steel "True to Zou Zou" show that, despite a major debt to Jagger-Richards, the brothers have also paid attention to Brian Jones's contribution to the late-'60s Stones. (The brief "White Jazz" suggests that the band has even been listening to Albert Ayler, or at least the first MC5 album.) Such eclecticism isn't enough to reinvent the blues-rock genre, but at its best "The Hardest Walk" does reanimate it.

-- Mark Jenkins