Reviews > CDs

Neal Casal: Sweeten The Distance

Royal Potato Family

Neal Casal, former fleet-fingered guitarist and dulcet-voiced singer for Ryan Adams’ Cardinals, who currently calls Chris Robinson’s Brotherhood home, is also a well established solo artist. (He’s a founding member of Hazy Malaze (and in the current incarnation of Beachwood Sparks, too.) Casal’s albums are, generally speaking, fairly mellow affairs that are less about guitar bravado and more about songcraft and delicate melodies. Sweeten The Distance remains in Casal’s trope of Laurel Canyonlike throwbacks but, compared to previous efforts, the hooks land harder, the melodies are more assertive and the songs are more electric. The album is front-loaded with standouts, including the nuanced title-track, the mid-tempo shuffle love plea “Need Shelter” and the driving “Let It All Begin, which signal that, nine proper LPs in, Casal is finally hitting his well-earned stride.