Billboard — A cult favorite in the jam-band world and the orbits closest to it, Grace Potter, possibly the planet’s finest 25-year-old Janis disciple/B3 virtuoso, and her band are distinctly of the See Them Live variety. Hence this online stocking stuffer recorded at a Maine opera house in the band’s Northeastern home territory. Potter’s a force-and-a-half, and her already beyond-her-years howl is aging pretty wonderfully, which means good things for broken-down weepers like “Ragged Company” and the last-ditch break-up “Apologies.” But she’s also getting comfortable going full sexpot on tracks like the new “Sugar,” a bizarro-world Def Leppard rejoinder whose simmer is a little self-conscious but saved, as the band often is, by its frontwoman’s accessible/dreamgirl charisma. That said, Potter’s in more than capable hands, as her band knows exactly when to roll up (as guitarist Scott Tournet does on “Stop the Bus”), back off and let the boss do her thing.
• DOWNLOAD: Grace Potter and the Nocturnals — Sugar (live).mp3
• RIYL: Read my 2007 interview with Grace and the band, for the much-missed No Depression.
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