Delta Spirit return to High Sierra after last year’s debut was so well received that we requested an encore this year. This five-man band from San Diego has a raw, unbridled youthful energy and urgency to its sound (two guitars, bass, keys and drums), one that’s propulsive and powerfully engaging. There's a scene in Murray Lerner's film ("Festival"), about the 1963 Newport Music Festival, where Peter, Paul and Mary are performing the protest song, "If I Had A Hammer." Peter and Paul face each other from the sides and Mary faces the audience, shaking her blonde hair and bearing down on a song about making change. They would hammer out danger and a warning all over the land. Delta Spirit have five hammers and they swing them the way Mary bobbed her head back in '63, the way Mary sang as if her knees were on fire and her mouth was brimming with more ire laced with optimism than she knew what to do with. These Californians have more in common with the long haired, dirty fingernailed folk groups of the nascent years than they do any of their contemporaries. They're suited for reminiscent hopefulness and the gracefully youthful fusion of hostility and all-encompassing passion for all things that can set a smile ablaze or turn the hairs on arms and backs of necks into little beds of nails at the flick of a switch. They make lists of things they like, including all of the people they love, their home, pretty girls, desserts, bodies of water, justice and America. They believe there's still hope for it and in all of the rooms contained within their songs. They're about reminding you to listen more than you talk. They're about urging you to put stock in the happiness of others, not just your own. They make it obvious that we have to go somewhere to be somewhere. We have to feel something to really live. They sing of the soul searchers. They sing for the soul searchers. They are the soul searchers.
