Like his partner Carrie Elkin, Danny Schmidt is in a good place right now.
In common with Elkin's album Call It My Garden, released almost simultaneously on the same label, Schmidt's songs exude warmth and optimism. This is his seventh album and second for Red House Records
It could so easily be otherwise as his wavering, plaintive voice is one that one normally associates with bleaker material. And some lines show that he doesn't want to gloss over the darker side of life. For instance, he reflects sombrely in Little White Angels that the "things we need are the things that choke us in the end". Equally, in the title track he confesses that he is not the easiest man to live with.
Yet while there is this world-weary introspective slant, this is an album in which he reflects on his place in the world from a stable centre. "These songs reflect a growthful period in my life", he says and you can hear this in songs like Houses Sing, Know Thy Place and Two Guitars.
At the same time, his self deprecating wit gives many songs a light, playful quality. A slightly offbeat view of the world means that a song like Guilty By Association Blues has a childlike sensibility despite the seriousness of the subject matter. The song is quite a damning indictment of the States but instead of resorting to a soapbox, he imagines drawing on the support of parrots, elephants and pigs: "If I had a pig, I'd teach that pig to count because it's money that rolls around in mud and hogs that rule the house"
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There's more humour in a similar vein in Almost Around The World, where he charts the fallout stemming from a review in the Netherlands. In an otherwise positive write-up, the meaning of the Guilty by Association song is lost in translation and misinterpreted as that of a "Cowboy poet" who supports the abuse of animals. When this story breaks online, vegans are up in arms and he gets branded as a commie and a terrorist.
Schmidt switches easily from the role of humorist to poet and an assured cover of Buckets of Rain shows the song writing debt he owes to Dylan. It's a sign of the strength of this album that this fits in seamlessly with the lyrical richness of his own songs.
Danny Schmidt's Website
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