Album of the Week, November 22, 2025
Another DLO3 album, another drummer. But the band felt so good about the arrival of Seattle drummer Dan Weiss that they named the album after him. Weiss was young—he recorded his first session, with the soul group The Sextones, in 2017—but in demand, also recording with soul band Object Heavy and with reggae artist Clinton Fearon. The band cut another originals-heavy album with Weiss, releasing it in 2022 on Colemine Records.
“Pull Your Pants Up” starts us off with that funk-soul hybrid that the group was getting so good at, and with a single crack of the snare from Weiss before he and the group launch into a stuttering strut of a tune. A screaming Hammond solo from Delvon Lamar over a Meters-style guitar line from Jimmy James: what more could you want? If your answer is “more Jimmy,” the next cut, “Don’t Worry ’Bout What I Do,” has you covered, with a crying guitar solo that manages to evoke Clapton, Hendrix, and Mick Ronson.
“I Wanna Be Where You Are,” a cover of a 1972 Michael Jackson hit by Arthur “T Boy” Ross and Leon Ware, brings back some of the early 1970s soul sound, with an unusual arrangement in the head: melody on the organ, no chords, quiet pedal bass, over James and Weiss. It’s a great tune; pumping up the bass would balance out the sound a lot more, at the cost of losing some of the fragile beauty of the original arrangement. As it is, the room in the arrangement gives the band more space to play into, and the result is something a bit like an Al Green tune, which is never a bad thing. The side closes out with “Big TT’s Blues,” which is what it says on the tin: a guitar-forward blues with early-1960s Jimmy Smith style organ solo. The swampy guitar solo from Jimmy James is worth the price of admission.
Side two opens with “Get Da Steppin’,” a pure funk tune with a slippery key signature with lots of sustained organ notes and crunchy chords. Delvon’s solo takes off, with some triple meter and more suspensions heightening the tension over the boom-bap of the drums.
“Uncertainty” is an original ballad in the early 1970s soul spirit, a gorgeous tune that stayed in the band’s live repertoire. They don’t try to blow this one out, keeping to the tune and even adding an unusual key change that takes it down a half step. The band segues to “Keep On Keepin’ On,” a solitary writing credit for Lamarr’s wife (and the band’s manager) Amy Novo and a funky tune with some stretched time in the chorus and an almost-out-of-time ascending line in the guitar in the verse.
“Slip ‘N’ Slide” is a fun soul strutter, uncomplicated and easy, a cool little instrumental with a proper chorus. The closer “This is Who I Is” is way more ambitious, with a squelchy guitar line over a bouncy drum beat anchoring Lamarr’s solo. Jimmy James sounds as if someone let him out of a cage, and he takes a raging reverb-heavy solo that stretches against Lamarr’s chords, the two spurring each other on all the way to the end.
Alas, the plan that Weiss would be the permanent drummer for the DLO3 was not to be. After recording and touring behind Cold as Weiss, founding guitarist Jimmy James took off to focus on his other band The True Loves, and Weiss left some time later. The band currently features Brice Calvin on guitar and Ashley Ickes on drums, and they’re still out there touring. Here’s hoping for another album someday—or at least that some of the other tracks they recorded along the way see the light of day. (The band’s last release, 2022’s Live in Loveland, was an archival release of another concert done the same day as Live at KEXP!, and apparently the band banked another dozen or more tracks during the recording of I Told You So.)
But speaking of cold as things, it’s getting kind of chilly around here! Next week we take a break for some seasonal music, which will carry us through the new year before we shift gears once more.
You can listen to this week’s album here:
BONUS: Colemine Records released the title track as a 45; the b-side was this little gem, “Fried Soul”:
BONUS BONUS: This band might not have been around for long, but they left a mighty impact. Here’s the band in an hour-plus long live performance, recorded before the album’s release, at Relix Studios in New York: