Nathaniel Rateliff Delivers His Most Intimate Album Yet With ‘South of Here’

A decade into their career as a band, Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats have settled into a groove as as roots-rock juggernauts, releasing records every three years and gracing festival main stages with high-energy live shows that foreground the band’s revivalist revue appeal.

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The band’s fourth album, South of Here , levels up the Rateliff’s Denver collective to arenas, so it comes as a delightful surprise that the album is also the most intimate offering from the group to date. Rateliff rhapsodizes about youthful wandering, middle-aged loss, and lifelong searching for connection and meaning with his gentle rasp that sounds more nimble and inventive than ever. He croons, warbles, whispers and, ultimately, belts over the Night Sweats’ slow-burning country-soul on “Get Used To the Night,” a song about survivor’s guilt and grief. One song before, on “Remember When I Was a Dancer,” he turns his own humming into an affecting chorus.

One song later , he’s cooing and howling throughout the title track, which reinforces the yearning reflection and moody nostalgia brimming throughout the LP: “Maybe go back home,” he sings, “remember who I was.”

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South of Here was produced by Brad Cook, who co-produced the group’s last record but takes over the reins by himself this time around. You can hear the warmth he’s lent to recent records by Waxahatchee and Hurray for the Riff Raff in the striped back, country-leaning Randy Newman-esque arrangements on songs like “I Would Like to Heal” and the breezy balladry on “Everybody Wants Something.” There are new dobro and banjo flourishes throughout, and the Night Sweats’ horns provide nuanced, simmering accents on songs like “Cars in the Desert” rather than trying to sound like the Bar-Kays.

A stray misstep or two notwithstanding, (the McCartney pastiche opening track doesn’t quite land), South of Here is the most fully formed and emotionally dynamic statement from Rateliff and the Night Sweats,’  a collection of warm reflections and meditations that aren’t bashful about wearing their influences on their sleeve

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