With his latest release, New Orleans-based guitarist and singersongwriter Eric Lindell returns to Alligator Records for his fourth overall album with the label and first since 2009’s Gulf Coast Highway . Over two decades into his musical career— which began in bars around San Francisco and eventually settled in the welcoming, collaborative Crescent City scene—Lindell is still dishing out plenty of punchy guitar licks that power his straightforward but undeniably effective tunes. On Revolution in Your Heart , Lindell takes the opportunity to look back on his West Coast youth a bit, not only with his laid-back vocal delivery and the beach-ready, major-key vibe of songs like the selfpositive “Revolution” and the bouncy “Heavy Heart,” but also with specific references like the “hot California sun” of the NorCal namesake of track “Kelly Ridge,” and the poignant childhood nostalgia of “Grandpa Jim” and “Pat West,” the latter serving as an ode to both lost friendship and faded innocence. Lindell, who plays nearly every note of the album, including guitar, bass, keyboards and harmonica (Willie McMains handles drumming duties, while Kevin McKendree provides the only other guest spot on the album with piano contributions to the country-tinged “Millie Kay”) also lets his NOLA influences shine from time to time on the record. Though technically a transplant to New Orleans, Lindell has more than earned his bayou stripes while playing with a number of revered area musicians throughout the years—including in the sporadic side-project Dragon Smoke with Dumpstaphunk’s Ivan Neville and Galactic’s rhythm section of Stanton Moore and Robert Mercurio—and Revolution proves that some of that spirit has long since been instilled in Lindell, on tracks like the swaggering, funk-guitar-fueled “Big Horse” and the blues shuffle of closing track “The Sun Don’t Shine.”