Love, Death & In Between. DeWolff

For over a decade now I have a strange relationship with Dutch psych-soul rockers DeWolff. Usually I like the albums right away but sort of never return to them that often. Live the band never fails to amaze me. It's time to see them once again. It's been too long thanks to Covid.

With Love, Death & In Between the band delivers another smoking record that makes me want to buy it straight away. Maybe even more than ever before. So much is going on this album. The band outdoes itself on many levels. Not where its psych-soul-rock is concerned. Like always this is very much alright. However, it seems like it is taken to a next level here.

DeWolff not only grooves in a huge way, the songs have additions all over the place. Funky soul horns, background vocals and all sorts of other fillings of musical holes. As it reads on Bandcamp: "We wanted ... as many people a possible". And the band has found them. At heart there's Luka's drums, Robin's Hammond organ and Pablo's guitar and then the fun starts. In a review in NRC I read that if it somehow was 18 August 1969 today, DeWolff would have been headlining 'Woodstock'. And yes, just listen how 'Message For My Baby' grooves. Compare that to Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, Shanana or even Paul Butterfield's 'Love March'. The winner there, as far as I'm concerned is Sly's 'Wanna Take You Higher'. 'Message For My Baby' holds up, folks. It is that good.

Love, Death & In Between over time may well prove to be the album in which the whole DeWolff's musical adventures since 2006 culminate. Everything learned in the studio and on the road comes together here. Unaffordable to reproduce on stage unfortunately. DeWolff is no Santana, alas. On record the band may never have sounded this good, so varied and at ease with its musical accomplishments. Where warmth has one out over wanting to score individually. This is a band more than ever before as well. A band that is able to write better songs still, assuring growth. The trip here is phenomenal. It's time to enter the larger venues, here and abroad. The songs and playing deserve it.

With youngsters discovering the music "of old" more and more, DeWolff ought to fall on fertile soil. Its music is modern in sound and pays tribute to what came before. A large audience is under way, I'd say. It's a matter of connecting the two groups, so that older, grey -haired men like me are joined by DeWolff's own age group and younger as well. That fills the larger venues. Go for it, guys!

Wout de Natris

You can listen to and order Love, Death & In Between here:

https://dewolff.bandcamp.com/album/love-death-in-between