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| Track List: 1. Still Love You 2. A is For 3. Won't Lie 4. Summer of John Wayne 5. Told My Troubles To The River 6. American Spirit 7. Please 8. Out of the Walls 9. Me & Stetson 10. Can't Find You 11. Best Winter 12. Fifteen Miles Downriver Running time: 41 minutes Released: 2010 |
Staccato mandolin kicks the album off with a reasonable roll to the playing, but the rest of Still Love You is pretty boringly put together. Individual elements are nice but the construction is lacking. It is followed by a horrid interlude that really just does not work for anything but putting the listener on edge.
I will say this for Tom McRae: he has evolved between albums, at least in some respects. This is not simply an inferior version of an earlier release, there has been a shift in the arrangements even as the vocal echoes back to his debut in its strained pleading (and although that sounds bad, I actually like that vocal affectation). My problem with this is that the bit I like about Won't Lie (for example) is drowned out by the changes that do not work for me. Addition of piercing woodwind gives a fuller sound, but not one I welcome.
The addition of deeper arrangements does not always make for better music, just as it does not always make things work badly. My personal feeling is that McRae's voice has more room to do what he does well with a flatter backing. Not a featureless one, but one without folds in which to hide the pained delivery that gives his vocal an identifiable character. Summer of John Wayne starts as though it might be up my street, and I find some of the passages in this song really quite pleasant, but when the arrangement inflates and envelops I find it dropping from my interest like a stone.
Ah, now that is a more promising sound... interesting percussion and loose keys. A significant departure in direction, and to my ear the backing is too high, the vocal too low, but a genuinely different track, and short enough for the cacophony to start the ears ringing but not leave them so. This is a good form of evolution, experimentation. I think it works, but it is on a fine line that will probably not have made Told My Troubles to the River a favourite to many.
I like the way this album shifts in tone, it is far from homogeneous. Most of the tunes are not really tripping my "ooh I like this" sense and I will be cutting many, but I do want to shout out to the roundedness of this release and the progression it marks in the performer. There are themes and elements that crop up again from song to song giving a sense of consistency, but each song also genuinely sounds different from the last rather than just trotting out the same structures time after time. Bigger sounds are followed by stripped back ones, melodic songs by percussive ones. Pensive or reflective stuff by more strident material. It is good diversity, a trait I did not expect going in to the listen. I am almost sorry for cutting the first third of the disc even as I continue to listen because the approach is to be applauded. That said, my patience and my ears can only stand some of the variations presented. The middle third of the album is much more to my taste - I have dumped Please, but the rest are staying and showcase the variety well enough.
As I enter the last few tracks I wonder how it will close. Can't Find You harks back to the opening track, but I find myself better disposed to it this time around - perhaps the lyric is more engaging; I find it hard to put my finger on why. It may just be that I have worked myself into a positive mindset, something I did not have at the outset of this post, and that positivity rubs off as charitable interpretation. Who knows. I find myself indecisive about Best Winter - I think it suffers from repetition, but it is short enough to excuse it. I think it treads a line of dullness, but that is quite a pleasant dullness - comfortable. I half want to cut it, half to keep. I think I am going to be charitable - the latter half of this record has impressed me enough that I think that charity is earned and despite Fifteen Miles Downriver feeling like it went on for ages it was a very nice, low key ending to the disc.
I have come out of this surprised and impressed. I did not expect to be keeping more than half the songs from this album going in, but McRae has added diversity to his armoury and employed it well to craft a second half that is very listenable indeed. It will never rank amongst my favourites but I am happy to keep it around.
I will say this for Tom McRae: he has evolved between albums, at least in some respects. This is not simply an inferior version of an earlier release, there has been a shift in the arrangements even as the vocal echoes back to his debut in its strained pleading (and although that sounds bad, I actually like that vocal affectation). My problem with this is that the bit I like about Won't Lie (for example) is drowned out by the changes that do not work for me. Addition of piercing woodwind gives a fuller sound, but not one I welcome.
The addition of deeper arrangements does not always make for better music, just as it does not always make things work badly. My personal feeling is that McRae's voice has more room to do what he does well with a flatter backing. Not a featureless one, but one without folds in which to hide the pained delivery that gives his vocal an identifiable character. Summer of John Wayne starts as though it might be up my street, and I find some of the passages in this song really quite pleasant, but when the arrangement inflates and envelops I find it dropping from my interest like a stone.
Ah, now that is a more promising sound... interesting percussion and loose keys. A significant departure in direction, and to my ear the backing is too high, the vocal too low, but a genuinely different track, and short enough for the cacophony to start the ears ringing but not leave them so. This is a good form of evolution, experimentation. I think it works, but it is on a fine line that will probably not have made Told My Troubles to the River a favourite to many.
I like the way this album shifts in tone, it is far from homogeneous. Most of the tunes are not really tripping my "ooh I like this" sense and I will be cutting many, but I do want to shout out to the roundedness of this release and the progression it marks in the performer. There are themes and elements that crop up again from song to song giving a sense of consistency, but each song also genuinely sounds different from the last rather than just trotting out the same structures time after time. Bigger sounds are followed by stripped back ones, melodic songs by percussive ones. Pensive or reflective stuff by more strident material. It is good diversity, a trait I did not expect going in to the listen. I am almost sorry for cutting the first third of the disc even as I continue to listen because the approach is to be applauded. That said, my patience and my ears can only stand some of the variations presented. The middle third of the album is much more to my taste - I have dumped Please, but the rest are staying and showcase the variety well enough.
As I enter the last few tracks I wonder how it will close. Can't Find You harks back to the opening track, but I find myself better disposed to it this time around - perhaps the lyric is more engaging; I find it hard to put my finger on why. It may just be that I have worked myself into a positive mindset, something I did not have at the outset of this post, and that positivity rubs off as charitable interpretation. Who knows. I find myself indecisive about Best Winter - I think it suffers from repetition, but it is short enough to excuse it. I think it treads a line of dullness, but that is quite a pleasant dullness - comfortable. I half want to cut it, half to keep. I think I am going to be charitable - the latter half of this record has impressed me enough that I think that charity is earned and despite Fifteen Miles Downriver feeling like it went on for ages it was a very nice, low key ending to the disc.
I have come out of this surprised and impressed. I did not expect to be keeping more than half the songs from this album going in, but McRae has added diversity to his armoury and employed it well to craft a second half that is very listenable indeed. It will never rank amongst my favourites but I am happy to keep it around.
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