Another stunning review, huge thanks to Dave Franklin, glad so many of you are enjoying 'River Man'!
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December 5, 2012Posted in: Reviews
An
acoustic guitar driven concept album about the lives of those living in
and around Pompeii, incorporating Roman literature and Islamic
religious text? Any takers? After such an opening salvo of a description
you would expect to find yourself running a mile from some earnest
prog-fest or twee hippydom’s flaky sentiments and rightly so. But it
doesn’t have to be this way and thankfully the artist in question, Anna
Neale, not only pulls the concept off but does so with grace and more
importantly accessibility.
Okay, maybe the term concept album is me being deliberately
rhetorical, a better term might be an album of concepts relating to the
human condition and explored through a certain time and place but still
of a universal nature. Love, life, loss and all that sort of thing.
Behind the pre-Raphaelite imagery of the cover is a collection of
well-crafted and well-balanced songs that run from the earthy and tribal
vibe of the title track through gentle guitar ballads (Light – a Who
Knows Where The Time Goes for the 21st Century?) and arabesques (All of
This) to the pop-accessible (Everything) frantic acoustic rock (False
Consciousness) and even slow-burning anthems (Fire.)
And as good as the songs themselves are it is the treatment and Jez
Larder’s production of them that really drives the album into the
end-zone (pardon the sports metaphor). More noticeable on some of the
more reflective moments on the album, it is the string washes that form a
sumptuous backdrop and the smooth Danny Thompson-esque bass lines that
dance sultrily behind the melody that really hits home. That’s not to
say the more direct song elements, such as the guitars and various
keyboardary (it’s a word) have anything to worry about, but often the
devil is in the detail.
On top of all the instrumentation Anna’s voice is a wonderfully
versatile instrument in it’s own right, swooning delicately, offering
wistful tones and following the albums marvellous dynamic shifts to
deliver full on stadium style euphoria as required, again listen to Fire
for the full range of her vocal prowess. Stunning!
And after talking about how good the overall product is, lets just
reel things back to basics and point out that underneath all the
wonderful enhancements and extra players that the studio allows you to
indulge in, lets not forget that these are cracking acoustic songs in
their own right and it’s easy to see that even if you have to strip
things back, as the costs and logistics of being on the road often
demand, you still have a set of songs that would easily stand their
ground alongside comparable peers of the genre, artists such as Suzanne
Vega or K T Tunstall.
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