„In fairness, the first few times I played ALL THESE DREAMS, I struggled to get a handle on where he was coming from, even though my wife instantly liked it. Then, during a motorway car journey when I witnessed a glorious winter sunset – bingo! – it hit me like a mallet. The album reminds me of those early Harry Nilsson albums. It has great lyrics, beautiful melodies, softly swooping strings, and a voice that sounds like it’s been rolled in tobacco and honey.“
„“Rainy Day Song,“ which opens the album, sounds like the work of a man who’s worked on Music Row 20 years. David Comb’s song has a story, melody, and a timeless chorus that will make you stop what you’re doing, turn the lights down low, and get comfortable for a journey into the past.“
Easy Ed is my favourite Americana specialist. He can write good stories, is a real insider of the American rock history and singer/songwriter-scene, knows some of the still living Grateful Dead, and has probably never enjoyed an album of Brian Eno’s ambient music. He writes for that big Americana site No Depression, and I would not be stunned, if in his normal life, he’s a seller of surf boards and regularly gets invitations for acoustic griots at mid-western campfires. Still looking for my first awesome song album, I ordered David Comb’s second album after reading his review. At least it seems to be music for time travellers. For Lajla, Ed would the ideal 13th Manafonista.
Nevertheless I’m not so sure i will share Easy Ed’s ethusiasm. Now, in these days everybody sings praise about 28-years young Natalie Prass and her album with Matthew E. White’s spacebomb-crew. Nothing here is retro, everything’s timeless, announces the reviewer in the Guardian – please, this is an old rhetoric pattern to make you keen on the super retro side of things. There’s at least a little bit of Dusty and Joni and Diana in here that one should be careful with these zones of timelessness.
Remember: last year I fell in love with the songs of Brian and Karl (both, Someday World and High Life), Sidsel and Stian, Mirel Wagner and King Creosote, Leonard and Marianne, Scott and Lucinda, Damon and Owen, James (Yorkston) and Mark (Kozelek) (Sun Kil Moon).
And now: Björk’s new one, mhmm. I haven’t heard it yet, but I read five of the song texts – okay, I understand, it’s a break-up album, but it’s wrapped in quite awful lyrics. For usual I cannot like an album that makes me a witness of someone’s love desaster finally finding temporary relief by singing: „I am fine-tuning my soul, to the universal wavelength.“ Which fucking universal wavelength? Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks was an exception, those songs were really spooky and, well, he knows how to write!
But maybe, this is not fair, cause often the adventurous side of music might succeed over second-class metaphors for rage and grief. For instance, the Icelandic singer has a master of darkness at her side, The Haxan Cloak. Let’s wait and see. Or do I really have to listen to that other album of the moment, by Viet Cong. Seems to be a post-punk band with, of course, an experimental approach. Deep sigh. Am I too old for such shit?
To be honest, the first four albums that blew my mind in 2015, are new and forthcoming jazz albums by ECM. Done by Jakob Bro (a discovery for me), Eberhard Weber, Vijay Iyer and Sinnika Langeland (more of a genre defying free folk album with undercurrents of jazz and classical elements, and definitely NOT a song album, only a few songs, based on texts of poet Thomas Tannströmer). And the „Nonplace Soundtracks“ are awaited with a high degree of curiosity.