Nate Paladino

Not much is written about Nate Paladino – at least not from himself or his promotion team. His website is as devoid of information as his social network presence is. A clever ploy to pique one’s interest using sheer curiosity in the guitar-wielding frontman with the retro fittings? Whatever the reason may be, the soloist from Orange County, California has produced a stylish and gutsy six-track EP that goes someway to filling out the elusive character biography.

Musically, Good Boy EP is all kinds of classical rock types – blues-centric from start to finish, songs mesh rock, do-wop, ballads and 50s-60s pop, rekindling the charisma of an era in which this sound directly influenced the entire culture of a young generation. Guitar-heavy in a good way was the order of the day back then and Good Boy EP revels in appropriating the honeyed DNA of the aforementioned genres for its provocative gains. Paladino’s EP proves that, although stylistically dated, there’s still a place for this in the grand scheme as Paladino’s boldness and unique causticness infuses an unexpected, contemporary intonation to the time-honourable musicality of the album.

The occasionally spurious-sounding themes set Good Boy EP apart from its phonographic predecessors. It's when you get into songs like the crassly-titled My Kind of Bitch and Buy Your Heart that you realise the term ‘Good Boy’ may be a paradoxical statement. Cynically intelligent, Paladino unleashes his introspective side within his song writing utilising classic storytelling with his unmannerly vernacular. He’s not interested in softening the message for the delicate sensibilities of the purists in the early proceedings but he does soon relent, heavily memorialising his influences with the blues rocky Don’t Say Maybe, the cute ballad that is Come Back Home and the funky, folk rock-tinged Something to Prove.

All in all, the Good Boy EP is a dynamic attempt to revamp the genres that are still nostalgically fashionable but do not receive much mainstream acclaim anymore.