{"id":41016,"date":"2008-07-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-17T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/a-person-a-heart\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T06:39:58","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T06:39:58","slug":"a-person-a-heart","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/a-person-a-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"A Person & A Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a year that started off ho-hum, 2008 sure has made up for lost ground in the past couple of months, especially on the indie front.\u00a0 First Mike Zito<\/a>, then Last Charge Of The Light Horse<\/a> and now previous Indie Of The Year runner-up<\/a> Jon Troast returns with another album of superb singer-songwriter material.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to start talking about Troast\u2019s new disc A Person & A Heart<\/i> without referencing the blog he\u2019s been keeping on his MySpace page<\/a> while performing a series of house concerts around the country.\u00a0 His warm, low-key, yet subtly observant entries help you understand his musical personality and why house concerts would suit him well.\u00a0 His songs are friendly and warm and revealingly wise and he comes across like the charming cousin you\u2019d gladly invite to stay over in your guest room or on your couch, just as long he brings his guitar.<\/p>\n

Musically, Troast sounds like the long-lost love child of Lyle Lovett and Jack Johnson, a shaggy acoustic troubadour with a keen wit, a soulful voice and an endearing earnestness about him.\u00a0 A Person & A Heart<\/i> features a full band for the most part — complete with twin saxophones — but the songs never lose their intimacy and immediacy, and Troast\u2019s throaty, low-key delivery never loses its inviting vulnerability.<\/p>\n

The opening title track is as pop as anything he\u2019s ever done, with bells and piano and a supple electric guitar line and a big chorus supplementing his effortless rhymes.\u00a0 The song itself, though, feels like an M.C. Escher painting, circular in its portrayal of the difficulty of expressing three-dimensional emotions and relationships in the form of two-dimensional art.\u00a0 The fact that he chooses drawing rather than songwriting as the art he writes about is what makes the whole metaphor work: <\/p>\n

\u201c\u2019Cause the hardest part
is a person and a heart
That\u2019s the only thing
I could never draw
\u2018Cause I don\u2019t know where someone starts, where they end
And I can\u2019t draw lines that could hold them in\u201d\u00a0<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The next two cuts are sweet-swinging home runs as well, funked-up folk tunes that charm with their silky grooves while widening your smile with their insights.\u00a0 \u201cWhat We Become\u201d is a smart, observant bit about how we\u2019re all mothers and fathers and daughters and sons, living inside a pattern that both repeats and continually evolves; \u201cHeaven\u2019s Got The Time\u201d is a loose, giddy, finger-snapping \u201cI\u2019m in love\u201d tune that could melt the heart of the coldest cynic.<\/p>\n

From there you get several more flavors of Troast wonderfulness.\u00a0 There\u2019s gospel-tinged pop (\u201cPrayer For Better Days\u2019), wry observational folk-funk (\u201cThink I\u2019m In Love,\u201d \u201cWe\u2019d Be Good For Us\u201d), and a deeply affectionate portrait of his hometown (\u201cLake Geneva<\/st1:place>\u201d; \u201cAll the local boys \/ Wait for the girls from Illinois<\/st1:place><\/st1:state>\u201d).<\/p>\n

Not everything here is light and happy, however.\u00a0 \u201cFor The Longest Time\u201d paints in darker tones, with an almost Dave Matthews arrangement of densely layered acoustic\/electric interplay.\u00a0 The country blues \u201cA Break-Up Song\u201d has bright instrumentation, but the lyrics are as close as Troast ever gets to brutal: \u201cInstead of saying we\u2019re just friends \/ Let\u2019s tear it open and call it what is \/ It\u2019s a knife right through my rib cage \/ It\u2019s a hammer to my head.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Closing things out are a pair of mostly acoustic, mostly melancholy songs that showcase Troast\u2019s own very expressive singing and playing.\u00a0 \u201cLoneliest Girl\u201d presents a richly detailed story-song and then \u201cWith A Smile Like That\u201d provides a sunnier finish with a tune about that special someone who becomes \u201cmy favorite place to go \/ You always feel like home.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a fitting finish to A Person & A Heart<\/i>, an album that fulfills every promise made by Second Story<\/i>; it\u2019s just as sweet and sincere and finely-crafted, yet more richly textured and musically diverse.\u00a0 Rather than continuing to wax rhapsodic here, though, I\u2019ll endeavor to keep this as direct as a Troast punchline: this is a terrific album; you should really buy it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":29438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7847],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-41016","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-jon-troast","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41016","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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41016"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51695,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41016\/revisions\/51695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41016"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41016"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}