"Pin Your Spin" review
Rolling Stone - April 21, 2004

"Singer-pianist Jon Cleary is English by birth but Dixie by nature, with a low steamy croon and a pumping-ivory drive as funky as the city he has long called home: New Orleans. Cleary can be an absolute monster on his own; I’ve seen him pin a full house to the back wall at Tipitina’s with an explosive solo charge through Professor Longhair’s "Big Chief." But Cleary’s full combo R&B is as broad, deep and roiling as the Mississippi river, the combined swinging product of local keyboard tradition, Cleary’s vocal-songwriting flair for moody Seventies soul and the spunky-Meters roll of his Gentlemen. Pin Your Spin is fragrant with the mixed pepper of classic Stevie Wonder, vintage Allen Toussaint, Dr. John’s Gris-Gris, the Average White Band’s "Pick up the Pieces" and, in the closing instrumental "Zulu Strut," the energy and memory of the late piano god James Booker.