Rock & Roll Party

Since 1998, Alexandria, VA has been humming and bucking to a home-cooked sound: the go-go-infused, country-fried, r&b-flavored rock of Virginia Coalition. “Rock and Roll Party” represents the maturity of those diverse influences into a sound that hooks the listener with an unmistakeable aesthetic which refuses to reside in the spinoff bin. Possessed of the finest features integral to the music of everyone from James Taylor to Wilson Pickett to Rare Essence to Wilco, VACO will seamlessly move you from impulsive bum-shakes to contemplative coffee sips, and their tunes will echo happily in your brain pan for hours after the record stops spinning. More than just a live band, this record represents a finely-trained ear for the premium transfusion of music-hall energy into studio eclectics. On “Jerry Jermaine,” the seamless combination of studio and live recordings transports the song to the meridian points of funk-rock; VACO brings forth the sense of the mischevious troubadour, jumping next to the hauntingly redemptive “Moon in the Morning,” whose Coldplay-ish refrain nestles nicely against the barnyard whoop of “Martha Lu” a few tracks later. On perhaps the finest track from the record, “This is Him (hurricane song),” accoustic guitars and Latin-flavored percussion give way to a dam-burst of joyous rock, painted over with the warmly soulful voice of vocalist Andy Poliakoff, who later channels the lovechild of James Brown and Jim Croce, again seamlessly. The sweet inflections of fellow singer Steve Dawson’s tunes is undercut with the playfulness the permeates the style-happy ensemble–a complicated melange of inspiration that goes off without a hitch, swiveling all hips and tapping all toes in its path. Every note is played to the hilt, without apology for its delicious diversity. In doing so, Virginia Coalition throws a raucously reverent “Party.”