Lone Justice - Lone Justice CDs • Vinyl Records • LPs • Music Albums

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The first side of Lone Justice's debut album bears a decided country & western stamp, while the flip reveals their soul roots on a brace of McKee originals. They play throughout with the expert zip of a band with one foot in the bars and the other in the arenas, McKee wailing away with cheerful, indomitable spunk. But the most direct influence on the band's sound is Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Petty's keyboardist Benmont Tench plays on the album as a de facto fifth member of the band, and Petty and guitarist Mike Campbell wrote the single "Ways to Be Wicked," (originally intended for Damn the Torpedoes). Yet even though the Heartbreakers' ringing, anthemic sound flavors some of the songs, Lone Justice strikes out in a lot of directions.

They are equally at home essaying a country-folk paean to the verities of the land ("Pass It On") or laying down a Bo Diddley beat with wall-to-wall acoustic guitars ("East of Eden"). McKee even slips in a verse of old-time gospel on the lowlife's lament "Soap, Soup and Salvation." But my favorite is "Wait 'Til We Get Home," wherein Maria works herself up into an Aretha Franklin-type lather 'cause she's not getting enough respect.

Lone Justice has already built up a furious head of steam on their first album. As Maria McKee gleefully chirps in "Pass It On," "A natural disaster can't hold nothin' on me." She's a tough one, all right, and Lone Justice is a band to watch. (RS 451)

PARKE PUTERBAUGH