W.S. Walcott Medicine Show

Echo In The Dust – Julianna Riolino (Moonwhistle Records)

Julianna Riolino’s third LP, Echo In The Dust ought to be a real game changer as far as her solo career is concerned. With a sound that harkens back to the female singers of the Laurel Canyon scene of the 1970’s, Julianna has really hit her stride with this one. That’s not to say that her previous efforts were not great in their own rights, but Echo, to my ears captures all the promise that we knew was possible when listening to J.R. and All Blue. With songs like “Smile” which draws an obvious nod to the sound of Stevie Nicks’ silky smooth style with a soaring vocal that one has to assume was the impetus for the LP title of Echo In The Dust.

Echo, however is much more than just a slick representation of the mellow LA music scene of yesteryear. We also get slow burning rockers like “Full Moon” (with some help from a rather unlikely collaboration with Weird NIghtmare), and then “Seed” which starts off like a classic Muscle Shoals southern soul tune before in vears off into psychedelics much more representative of Riolino’s work with Daniel Romano and his band The Outfit. And on and on we go with a mixed bag of sounds and styles, from the Linda Ronstadt-like “Be Good To Your Mother” to the flat out rock and roll of “It’s A Shakedown” to the Neko Case sounding “let Me Dream”. All in all, Riolino and Echo In The Dust offers up a little bit of everything that despite dsiplaying homages to a plethora of influences, is still very much pure unadulterated Julianna Riolino and that ought to scratch virtually any musical itch.