On the whim of a sweet, guitar-driven groove, “Doin Whatcha Doin,” the latest single from Sarah Diamond & the Soul Miners, comes to life in an explosion of strings and homespun harmonies. The drums take a second to warm to the rhythm of the strings, but it isn’t long before they’re clicking into place with the sterling fretwork from the lead guitar and the sultry slickness of the bass. As black and white as the rigid percussive track is next to the fluid guitar play, it isn’t completely colorless in the master mix, which makes a point of amplifying every blissfully quaint facet of texture within the composition. Once Diamond starts to sing, our hearts melt on the spot under the glare of her white hot melody, and trying to turn back from the path that we’ve started down is swiftly proven futile.
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Diamond sings with a lot of soul and raw emotion starting in the introductory verse of “Doin Whatcha Doin,” and you can tell that she means every single word that’s slipping from her lips into the atmosphere around us. She takes her time spreading out the harmony created between her voice and the strings across each one of the lines that follow, and although she doesn’t hold anything back from us in her execution of the lyrics, it’s clear that she’s building our tensions up for a fiery fever pitch in the chorus, which looms over the horizon like a beautiful setting sun.
The guitars rev up the overdrive as we get into the central hook in the song, but there’s nothing powerful enough to turn our attention away from the soul-laden drawl of Sarah Diamond when she’s laying into the chorus’ agile verses. She’s an unstoppable force of nature at this point; even if a more traditional guitar solo were to try and impart a thunderous musical bend to the bridge, we’d still be left itching for her to return to the mic and lead us through this storm of strings and into the Promised Land. Diamond never lets any of the immensely textured grooves interrupt her defiant discharge of the lyrics, and while this is only one of the songs of interest presently in her discography, it’s more than enough to justify all of the interest that critics have taken in the forthcoming release.
Rocking a bombastic swing and a folky melody in the center of all its slightly augmented layers, Sarah Diamond’s “Doin Whatcha Doin” reaches its conclusion in a foggy outro made up of little more than a lingering strand of amplified warmth that perhaps hints at even more primal grooves waiting for us in the future to come. There’s no other way to put it – Diamond’s new release is a slab of modern country music that has nothing in common with the commercialized angle abused by her west coast counterparts and shares much more with the legendary work of timeless troubadours who paved the way for her career decades ago. If she keeps at this current pace, I wholeheartedly believe that this will not be the last time she and her band make headlines with this unmatched sound. You can catch Sarah Diamond & The Soul Miners at the Florida State Fair in February.
Grove Stage
Feb 9- Feb 14
Everyday Showtimes:
3:00-3:30PM
6:00-6:30PM
8:30-9:00PM
Claire Uebelacker