Any band whose motto is “Bring back the art of making music” has set a lofty critical bar for themselves. On their second release, Milwaukee’s Rebecca and the Grey Notes perform increasingly assured chin-ups on that bar with a smart, sincere amalgam of unassumingly sweet acoustic country, light blues-rock swagger and a hooky sort of Americana. The familial bond of lead singer Rebecca Famularo and the presence of her lead guitarist-father among her three Grey Notes put them in the city’s parent-child lineage of The Spanic Boys, an act whose rootsiness aptly parallels their sound, too.
Regardless whether she’s singing of love gone right, wrong or yet to be requited, Rebecca brings to it a balance of softness and stridency that ought to win her favor with listeners who already have Bonnie Raitt and Sheryl Crow in their playlists.
