The Dip – Delivers (Vinyl)

Description

The DIP Delivers is the second full length LP from Seattle soul outfit The DIP, described by KEXP as “one of the most exciting and joyous acts to emerge in recent years”. Vintage rhythm-and-blues combines with classic pop storytelling for an album that is simultaneously raw and polished, and perpetually danceable.

Tracks:
1.1 Sure Don’t Miss You
1.2 Best Believe
1.3 Advertising (Feat. Jimmy James ; Delvon Lamarr)
1.4 Adeline
1.5 Atlas
1.6 Slow Sipper
1.7 Spiderweb
1.8 Starcastle
1.9 She Gave Me the Keys
1.10 Sea Snake

They call themselves The Dip, but their sound is more like an immersion, a baptism of soul.

The seven-piece Seattle group got their name from the barbecue sauce they concocted for their backyard cookouts and sell at shows. But when they crank up, it’s a soul throwdown in the style of the Dap Kings or Charles Bradley, with hints of Eli Paperboy Reed flaring up here and there as well.

The band — frontman Tom Eddy on vocals and guitar, Jacob Lundgren on guitar, bassist Mark Hunter, drummer Jarred Katz, Evan Smith on baritone sax, Levi Gillis on tenor, and Brennan Carter on trumpet — specializes in ’70s-era soul, horn-heavy, smooth, but with an itchy backbone.

Their sophomore release, The Dip Delivers, does as advertised, laying out an array of soulful sauces to spread on or dunk your musical entrée in.

The opener, “Sure Do Miss You,” has a Tyrone Davis feel, a little more urgent and itchy, but locked down tight into a funky soul ’70s  groove, Eddy’s impassioned vocal straddling the line between churchy and secular.

“She Gave Me The Keys” is a smooth soul glide inspired by a true story: when Eddy’s beloved finally trusted her rock-and-roll bum enough to toss him the keys to her vintage sled. Some critics have slapped a doo-wop label on it, but to Southern ears it sounds like what was called beach music in the Carolinas, originally R&B performed by black artists that made its way to jukeboxes along the North and South Carolina shores in the late ’50s and early ’60s, spawning a generation of dancers performing a fancy-footed dance called the shag.

“Slow Sipper” sounds Charles Bradley-inspired, the Dips making Dap Kings sounds behind Eddy as Barkley bares his soul and strips his tonsils as organist Delvon Lamarr burbles churchily around him.

“Adeline” is the closest the band comes to doo-wop, a song that would have fit comfortably in a Little Anthony and the Imperials set list.

Eddy shows off his crooning skills on “Atlas,” mellow, creamy soul smoothed out with the help of the Honeynut horns.

Bordered by ragged shards of guitar riffs, crackly Jimmy McGriff-style organ bracketed by the Honeynuts, “Advertising” is one of the edgiest cuts, wiggly soul with a whiff of funk.

For those of us for whom such music was the soundtrack of our lives, The Dip provide a pleasant tickle in our soul receptors, a heart-felt homage to the originators presented masterfully by a new generation of soul music fans.

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