While Bear Rinehart is best known for his work fronting the country-rock NEEDTOBREATHE, he has also fashioned his own soul music identity as Wilder Woods. On FEVER / SKY, he ups the emotion and the delivery.
Like his self-titled 2009 Wilder Woods debut (QRO review), FEVER traffics in the white-boy soul revival seen since Bowie’s Young Americans. But on a number of tracks, Rinehart raises his game, starting with the big, fun revival of opener “Maestro (Tears Don’t Lie)” and “Be the Man”, plus the emotional uplift to “Go Ahead” that brings to mind the best of Jack Antonoff’s Bleachers aping Bruce Springsteen (who recently had his own record of soul covers).
Not every song on FEVER / SKY reaches those heights, and it ends with Rinehart in sad country mode with “Make Your Own Mistakes”, but this is an artist making his own name, on his own, in his own genre.
