Pokey LaFarge's 'Rent Money' Is a Warm, Hard-Working Masterpiece of '60s Soul
Fifteen years of Pokey LaFarge records have worked like a deck of cards being shuffled — jazz, country, blues, gospel, rockabilly, vaudeville, all cut together into something Bandcamp Daily’s Jim Allen calls “eclectic, organic, and utterly American-sounding.” Rent Money is the first one where he stops shuffling and deals. It leans hard toward ’60s R&B, and it’s his first full-length for Boxer Boy Records, the label he owns.
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: Elliot Bergman produced this at a woodsy Chicagoland studio, per Folk Alley, and the choice shows in how the bottom of the record breathes. Nothing is compressed into a brick; the low end walks rather than thuds, which is the whole point of a soul record where the groove has to carry lyrics about not making rent. The Spatial Dynamics: Allen’s comparison is to James Hunter — songs that “sound like they could be covers from 60-plus years ago but somehow still feel like a part of the present.” That trick is a mix decision as much as a writing one. The band sits in one room, close and dry, so the arrangements read as people rather than tracks. Addie Hamilton’s voice, on the record and on stage with him, is the warm edge on the harmonies.
Standout Performance
LaFarge’s own singing, which has picked up a gospel-shaped lift it didn’t have three albums ago.
Why It’s Certified
⚡ “Work” and the title track are where Allen hears the “salt-of-the-earth blue-collar POV” — songs about scraping by that refuse to be miserable about it. 🌈 “Can’t Take It With You” is jaunty about mortality; “Big Boss Man” is a story song about devilish authority; the closing “On and On” goes out under revival-tent light.
No Depression summed it: “all at once pragmatic and boundless, orderly and feverish.” Certified great.