White Lightning

There are things about Potter and her band—guitarist Scott Tournet, bassist Bryan Dondero and drummer Matt Burr—that seem to be in tension, but by rubbing those elements together, they’ve produced something like static electricity. Or as she puts it, “bottled lightning.”

With the blues-informed rock of last year’s This Is Somewhere—their first album on Hollywood Records and second after Nothing But the Water under the full band moniker—the quartet worked toward joining live zeal (à la the jam band scene) with freestanding songs.

“Maybe you aren’t in the mood to jam one day—at least you’ve got this packet of 12 songs that are just going to tip people over even if you’re having a terrible day,” she says. “I’m proud of it—it’s a powerful journey for us—but it’s not the core of who we are as a live band,” she says. “It’s the best that we can be as a recorded band. [Producer and ex-Whiskeytown member] Mike [Daly] kept saying over and over again, ‘We’ve just got to make these songs bulletproof.’ ”

Potter and the Nocturnals make good friction with their take on a vintage-meets-now sound, as exemplified during “Mastermind.” Various modern touches like the electronic whooshing and whizzing of a stylophone and a cycling, mathematical-sounding three-note keyboard riff pop up between chugging, piano-driven soul-rock choruses, topped with the bright, throaty punch of Potter’s belting.

“From ’68 to ’74 were such fundamental years for rock ’n’ roll,” she says. “So much music was being created. Think back from 2002 to 2008—has anything happened that’s half as important as the stuff that happened in that chunk of years? We want to carry that flag and not deny that so much of what music is today was all [birthed] in that time. Then again, it’s about finding your own sound within that and not copping, because I’ve already done that. It only gets you into the ‘cover-band-wedding-singer’ category of good.”

The new album’s verve is the result of a several-years progression from Potter’s mellow folk experiments to a bigger, louder approach, during which she added the molten, guttural sound of B-3 organ to her bag of tricks at Burr and Tournet’s suggestion, and weaned herself off of imitation. (“There was a lot of, ‘I love this blues progression that J.J. [Cale] did, so I’m going to do the exact same thing, except with a different turnaround in the chorus,’ ” Potter says of her previous tendencies.)

The heady shifts and tensions don’t end there. The 24-year-old Potter has also added confessional songwriting, writing less in the voice of older women than she has in the past, except for the final track. The weary, gospel slow-burn of “Big White Gate”—sung from the perspective of an 84-year-old woman—is part her grandmother’s story and part imagination. Potter describes the album’s focus as “me, me, me, me, me—grandma.”

Even though Potter’s name is most prominent and her powerful voice and songwriting are featured, it’s evident from the engaged, inspired performances of all four members that everybody contributes to a song. “I don’t hand them charts. I just play the song and see where they take it,” she says. “When I go back in and slash and burn choruses and change around verses, there is a level of loss for everybody in the band, because that song became everybody’s song.”

And that kind of band cohesion is evident onstage as well. “People come to these shows to see all of us,” she says. “There are plenty of nice, pretty young girls that come stand in the front row, and they are not standing there to look up my skirt—I can tell you that much. Oh, a couple maybe.”