The more I get into this job, the more artists I get a chance to
\nhear. And the more I hear, the more I’m getting convinced that
\nanother revival of folk music is just around the corner (even if it
\nwouldn’t be a commercially feasible idea, I’d be all for it).
\nArtists like David Wilcox and James Keelaghan have all shown me
\nthat good folk music is alive, well and being practiced all
\naround.<\/p>\n
Now comes another artist who is carrying that torch – in more
\nways than one, judging by the album cover. Guy Forsyth’s latest
\ndisc
\nCan You Live Without<\/i> is a surprisingly fresh approach to an
\nold, classic sound to folk that is a wonderful thing to
\nexperience.<\/p>\n
Just the sound of the album’s opening track “Calico Girl” lets
\nyou know that whatever preconceived notion you had about this album
\nis probably wrong. With the help of band members like percussionist
\n“Mambo” John Treanor, bassist The Mighty Gil “T” and drummer Chris
\nSearles just to name a few, Forsyth creates a mood that has one
\nfoot firmly planted in the roots of this music and the other in
\n1999.<\/p>\n
With tracks like “New Monkey King,” “If I Was Sick” and the
\ntitle track, Forsyth starts to break Antone’s out of the mold of
\nbeing strictly a blues label and moves them into new territories.
\nAnd while Forsyth’s music can’t be simply labeled as blues (or
\nlabeled at all, for that matter), there is a splash of the blues
\nincorporated into his music that ties all the different styles
\ntogether into one neat package.<\/p>\n
The centerpiece of the album is “Heart Of Sawdust,” a tale about
\nlosing grasp of one’s past and the innocence of youth, and trying
\nto look at an adult world through the eyes of a past childhood just
\none more time. It’s a moving track, and one that reminds me a lot
\nof the work of artists like Wilcox due to its touching, gentle
\nbeauty.<\/p>\n
If
\nCan You Live Without<\/i> is guilty of anything, it’s guilty of
\nnot having more moments like “Heart Of Sawdust” on it. It’s not
\nthat tracks such as “Don’t You Mind People Grinnin’ In Your Face”
\nor “Children Of Jack” are bad; it’s just that they don’t have as
\nmuch staying power as “Heart Of Sawdust”. If there were more tracks
\nin this vein, I truly believe this would have been an unstoppable
\nalbum.<\/p>\n
Still, the 12 tracks on
\nCan You Live Without<\/i> are a pleasant enough way to spend the
\nbetter part of an hour, and Forsyth impresses me as a musician and
\nartist who has a very bright future ahead of him. It will be
\ninteresting to see if he takes the lessons of this album to heart;
\nif he does, something tells me I’ll be proclaiming his next album
\nas the best of that year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27562,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7379],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-38937","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-guy-forsyth","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38937"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38937"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}