This is a cracker of a debut album from DREW NELSON, so accomplished it speaks of years of work building to this point of getting himself recorded.
A lot of the credit must go to Michael Crittenden who produces and plays guitar and piano (amongst other things). The production is fantastic: warm, intimate and clear. The songs come through and speak for themselves but there's lots of background detail that rewards repeated listening.
Drew is firmly in the singer/songwriter mould, and his acoustic guitar playing is excellent - sometimes coming over jazzy enough to be reminiscent of John Martyn in the early 70's. His singing is pleasingly gruff, very warm and sincere; when he rocks out a bit on "Wal-Mart V2.0", a kind of protest song about changes for the worse in his neighbourhood, his singing is harder and more assertive but he knows better than to try too hard; he doesn't need to batter his audience into submission, he's got subtler tricks to his trade than that.
Drew's songs cover a wide area, from social commentary to celebration of the simple pleasure of being alive in the world; he's serious and thoughtful, and definitely cliche free, which is always welcome. Clearly all these songs would come over strongly with just the man and his guitar, but for the benefit of the album each song is drawn out to a distinct musical character - so that the sublime "Summer Rain" has a mellow, jazzy feel, even with a pedal steel in the arrangement, and it captures the feel of a hot, sticky day quite magically. "Immigrant Son", on the other hand, a meditation on the immigrant state of mind that continues to play its part in American society, is coloured by fiddle, tin whistle and bodhran to evoke the Celtic heritage of so many of those immigrants.
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I hope this guy has some more songs in his locker, and that he gets to work with Michael Crittenden again. They're a good team and this is a richly rewarding album.
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