Album Review: Little Feat

By Aaron Davis (for JHWeekly.com)Rooster Rag Little Feat ***Now 16 studio albums deep, Rooster Rag is Little Feat’s first batch of original material since 2003’s Kickin’ it at the Barn. There are two strong blues covers that bookend the set – Mississippi John Hurt’s “Candy Man Blues,” and Willie Dixon’s “Mellow Down Easy.” Keyboardist Bill Payne and Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter connect for four focused tunes, including standout track “Rooster Rag,” a swingin’ affair complete with trumpet, sax, slide acoustic guitar, and fiddling via Dylan sideman Larry Campbell. Guitarist Fred Tackett’s first contribution, gospel-tinged “Church Falling Down,” makes room for the most open of jams. Tracking here is dense with instrumentation, sometimes so much so that it gets lost in translation, substituted for the big hooks that define some of Feat’s best material. That aside, it’s commendable that, five decades into the band’s career, Little Feat is still building original material.