Getting There

Description

Nicknamed "the king of rhythm and soul" by Mojo, Eli Paperboy Reed left Brookline, MA, for Clarksdale, MS, as a teenager, honing his skills while immersing himself in the Delta juke joint culture. After a stint with the renowned gospel singer Mitty Collier in South Chicago in his early twenties, Reed returned to the Boston area and began to attract attention with a series of albums that received widespread acclaim, with NPR praising the music as "inspired, raw, and powerful" and Uncut lauding its "urgent and electric energy." These records earned him numerous deals with major labels, many songs placed in film and television, as well as dates at festivals around the world, establishing him as one of the most compelling and consistent soul men of the modern era. In his latest collection, Getting There, Reed explores a more adult love, reflecting on what it takes for two people to navigate the distance between good and bad times. Produced by the legendary R&B iconoclast Swamp Dogg, the album is a joyful dose of timeless soul and roots music, but it is also a deeply mature work of lyrical craftsmanship, confronting the ups and downs of long-term love while illuminating the multiple threads connecting soul, gospel, and R&B to folk, country, and rock and roll. Add all this together, and you get a captivating vision of the work that follows the fireworks, an ode to the extraordinary endurance of the ordinary, everyday love that makes the world go round.