Thanks, I'll Eat It Here

Little Feat leader Lowell George had already laid down some of rock ’n’ roll's finest moments (Sailin’ Shoes, Dixie Chicken) by the time he recorded his only solo album. (He was also fed up with Little Feat’s increasing fondness for the suddenly mainstream sound of jazz-fusion.) George’s pleasing and believable voice could sell any theme, and he was a poet of the streets whose gift for spinning yarns from the darkside dovetailed perfectly with his big-as-California heart. There’s some of that here, on the songs he wrote, but mostly there’s lots of the New Orleans sweetness that he went for on Dixie Chicken: mixes of funk, R&B, pop and jazz. Allen Toussaint’s warm “What Do You Want the Girl Do” leads things, while a funked-up yet unfussy Feat retread (“Two Trains”) simply sings. George tackles Rickie Lee Jones’ “Easy Money,” which helped jumpstart Jones’ own career. George's own “20 Million Things” and Fred Tackett’s “Find a River” are such tender regrets that they sum up his troubled life, which, sadly, ended just after this album dropped.