Folk singer-songwriter Steve Wallis was raised in the backpacker paradise of Byron Bay, Australia, but moved to Paris, France in 2014. Neither of these attractive locations affect the overall dark mood of this album since the artist is evidently inspired by classic Americana songwriters like Townes Van Zandt, John Prine, or Justin Townes Earle.
A chance meeting in New York with English songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Joe Boon eventually led to album being recorded, post-Covid, in and around Boon’s small studio in North Devon.
It is pretty much a solo work although some harmonies are sung by Bryony Lewis and Kara McKee and other musical contributions were mailed in from a distance. A decision was made to go for rawness rather than lushness.
A moral that could be drawn from the eleven original songs on this debut album is that identifying your demons does not necessarily mean you can escape them.
Wallis’ raw, unfiltered honesty means that he is unafraid to confront the implications of this harsh truth. He is therefore prepared be defined by a set of tunes that are relentlessly melancholy.
The drawback to this is that it makes for a maudlin collection of songs where joy is seen as fleeting and loneliness is constantly the default position.
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“I’ll stop dwelling on the things that I can’t change” Wallis sings in Her Name but there’s little evidence that he is likely to succeed in fulfilling this resolve.
The painfully autobiographical thrust of The Wolf gives a key as to the reason why. By reverting to the self-destructive habit of heavy drinking, he admits “there’s a darkness that lures you in.”
I am drawn to miserabilist singers as much as the next glass half-empty guy but some glimmer of hope or humour is always needed to make the bleakness bearable.
Even when Steve Wallis is momentarily encouraged by Little Pearls Of Water, he can’t resist reminding the listener that these metaphors for lightness and joy are always gone in the blink of an eye.
The album closes with title track which was recorded live in a small church in the village of Georgeham which merely serves to suggest that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Steve Wallis’ website
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