By: Sam Houghton
Rating: 8/11

Snow may whip outside, and a golf ball sized piece of hail may beat on your skull, but when Foster McGinty is blaring through the headphones, this chill feels like walking through sunshine and smiling at the ladies. Psychedelic bell-bottoms flare from your feet and mirrored sunglasses bounce with your smooth stride. Then the song climaxes, and boom! The guitar wails, and the ladies, the sunshine, and the bellbottoms disappear beside the frenzy ripping forth from McGinty’s guitar.

That’s the feeling of the lead off number from this Foster McGinty album, Peach Red (2009). “Can’t Help But Shine” is a great hit from McGinty’s newly budding career. The song praises McGinty’s loved one for having grace, charm, and the natural ability to shine. That shining charm of which McGinty speaks radiates from the song, and gets this album rolling right out of the gates.

The next few songs proceeding “Can’t Help But Shine” carry on with a similar exuberance. “10 Moons” and “Hard Jelly” both breach the realms of funk, but not that space ship '80s funk that’s so silly, it hurts to listen to. McGinty adds enough Hubert Sumlin and Clapton licks, real bluesy, quick and tong-out fillers, to turn Sly Stone like grooves into soulful and rocking tracks.

Once or twice a song tends to simmer off and wilt, mostly toward the end of the album. Peach Red may occasionally linger in slow, vocally driven ballads like “Turquois,” but expect to be blown away by the guitar work on this album. Songs like “Dreamcatcher” and “Darlyn Giver,” or any song for that matter—McGinty’s guitar moves this album with force, even in the slow ballads. Take “Turquois” again: Foster’s voice falters a bit, but his rare ability to blend the guitar god’s like Clapton and Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan is remarkable, and in this ability, the song jells. His solos are ferocious, sometimes sublime and soothing, but always in departure from that all too prominent cliché solo we tend to hear. There hasn’t been a decent, well-known blues band in decades that can produce a unique solo with spunk and force. McGinty is making that bid. With the release of this album, he’s putting himself right there.

Peach Red is a breath of fresh air from current music. From the Jonas Brothers to the new, often heavy electric sounds of indy bands, McGinty’s sound injects a feeling that rock really needs. It’s got a swagger to it. It gasses up your spine with some life.