grace potter the nocturnals

Grace Potter, Scott Tournet, and Benny Yurco find their muse and make it soar with a kaleidoscope instrumental attack and a deep guitar bromance.


Photo by Joshua Touster

Making an album is nothing like a live performance, so testifies the sultry-voiced and multifaceted lead woman Grace Potter. Despite a penchant to really lay it all out on the stage, when making The Lion The Beast The Beat—the fourth studio release from her band the Nocturnals—things didn’t exactly gel right off-the-cuff in the studio.

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A full range of foot-stompers, piercing hooks, and driving melody

Grace Potter & the Nocturnals
The Lion The Beast The Beat
Hollywood Records


Last season on The Voice, Alanis Morissette told a timid contender that she needed to find “Bertha”—the big, burning voice inside of her. Compared to solid earlier efforts from a group who warmed up in jam-band land, Grace Potter & the Nocturnals have found Bertha, and she wails on The Lion The Beast The Beat.

The guitar-heavy, multiple-genre attack is presented seamlessly, beginning with a nice, loud statement in the title track that lays chanting over a primitive drum trance before guitarists Scott Tournet and Benny Yurco launch into the shred-osphere. Potter co-wrote several high-energy tracks with Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, including the standout, “Never Go Back,” which begins with a foundation of muscular riffage and fuzz, then blossoms with punchy surf layers and sexy twang. Auerbach’s presence is felt in the subtle way collaboration should be— the nuanced material doesn’t sound like it belongs to somebody else.

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Premier Guitar's Jason Shadrick is On Location at the House of Blues in Chicago, where he catches up with Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. Jason talks to Grace and bandmates Scott Tournet and Benny Yurco about their equipment on their 2011 Summer Tour.



Premier Guitar's Jason Shadrick is On Location at the House of Blues in Chicago, where he catches up with Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. Jason talks to Grace and bandmates Scott Tournet and Benny Yurco about their equipment on their 2011 Summer Tour.