It’s been 16 years now since married musicians Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks decided the answer to work-life balance was to combine their respective individual blues-rock bands into a single super-sized unit. Half a dozen albums, twice that many well-attended tours, and a Grammy Award later, it seems safe to say the experiment has been a success.

In fact, the band has become its own kind of family, with six of its 12 members still present from the original 2010 lineup, and three more around for more than a decade now. Even the loss of the great Kofi Burbridge, who passed in 2019 at just 57, slowed the group only momentarily, with Gabe Dixon assuming the keyboard mantle with grace and passion.

The group’s 2022 quadruple album I Am The Moon set a new bar for musical ambition in the TTB even as a few fans may have lost the thread due to the album’s sheer girth. That said, TTB remains a reliable touring machine, typically playing 70 to 90 dates a year, and Future Soul, for all its familiar TTB-isms, suggests the collective’s musical partnership continues to be a fruitful and rewarding one.

Three things distinguish every TTB album: Trucks’ lyrical slide playing, often evoking Duane Allman; Tedeschi’s smoky, ardent lead vocals, often reminiscent of Janis Joplin and Bonnie Raitt; and the richly textured arrangements and dynamic grooves laid down on track after track by the superb ensemble behind them.

Future Soul opens with a deep blues groove, Trucks and Dixon priming the musical engine with a resonant guitar/organ hook as Tedeschi sings passionately of the tumult of love in “Crazy Cryin’.” Next, “I Got You” delivers a burst of sunshine, a rolling-tumbling song of devotion punctuated with rhythm section hitches, big horns and an ecstatic wordless chant that enters at the bridge and repeats just before a soaring Trucks slide solo. In other words, classic TTB musical exuberance.

They dial it back for “Who Am I,” a gentle, steady-on love song that might or might not be autobiographical. Most of the songs here are credited to some combination of Trucks, Tedeschi, Dixon, and Mike Mattison (background and occasional lead vocals); in this case it’s all four of them. Drummer Tyler Greenwell joins the songwriting mix for the airy, hard-rocking “Hero,” featuring a fierce and tasty jam consuming the final third.

They transition to acoustics for the poignant “What In The World,” written by Paul Olsen, Mattison’s partner in his side project Scrapomatic, which has frequently opened for TTB. Title track “Future Soul” arrives in style, its overdriven electric leads dressed up in bold production, a driving blues-rocker from the pen of Mattison, who sings lead on the following “Under The Knife.” The latter is a soulful number featuring the always-pleasing match of Trucks’ silky slide with Mattison’s soulful vocals.

“Be Kind” and “Devil Be Gone” are a pair of Dixon tunes that lean into swampy blues, the latter in particular featuring a deep Booker T-style groove, big horns and background vocals. Penultimate tune “Shout Out” features a lilting hook and a chorus that soars on collective vocal power, organ and horns, and they close out the album with the wistful paean to home “Ride On.”

Future Soul delivers a powerful dose of everything you ever loved about the Tedeschi Trucks Band—the passion, the intricacy, the thoughtful melding of blues, rock, country and soul elements, the sense of a group on a collective mission to soar and groove as one. It was a bold move, merging two bands into one, but it seems to have worked out beautifully for Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, whose love gave birth to a musical powerhouse.

Rating: B+

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