What do you do when the E Street band members go back to their day jobs? Forge on with deliberate pace, as Robert Allen, who records under the name DownTown Mystic, does on his new EP, “Soul’d Out.”
The new single on his Sha-La Music, receiving its premiere here on The Vinyl District is like a lot of DownTown Mystic’s earlier work, forging a link between familiar-sounding classic rock with an urgency of now.
Allen co wrote and produced “Soul’d Out” with lyrics from Martin Samuel, whose words are a kind of throwback as well, with a chorus that begins “How could something so right have to turn out so wrong?”
Although Garry Tallent and Max Weinberg aren’t providing the rhythm section, as they did on the last full length album, DownTown Mystic on E Street, “Soul’d Out” does have Steve Brown of Trixter on acoustic 12-string guitar as well as PJ Farley on bass.
The most familiar name on the 3 track digital single, though, is likely to be “Brian Jones,” title and subject of the second new song on release, saluting the late Rolling Stone’s legacy while quoting several Stones songs in the process. Also included, a previously unreleased radio mix of DownTown Mystic’s “Rise and Fall #2.”
“Soul’d Out” is the fourth single to be released in advance of the upcoming DownTown Mystic album Rock ’n’ Roll Romantic, due out next year.
