{"id":41856,"date":"2010-01-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-22T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/open-hand\/"},"modified":"2010-01-22T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-22T00:00:00","slug":"open-hand","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/open-hand\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Hand"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was both surprised and chagrined when I discovered this review \u2013 coming as it does in the Vault\u2019s 14th<\/sup> year of existence \u2013 will be the first we\u2019ve ever run of David Wilcox.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Not that Wilcox is a household name; in fact, ever since his early-90s three-albums-and-out rollercoaster ride with A&M Records, he\u2019s purposefully kept things low to the ground, establishing a stable career as an independent artist, playing a steady stream of solo dates and issuing 10 albums on indie labels like Koch, Vanguard, and in recent years, What Are Records.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Gifted with a honey-warm baritone that draws inevitable comparisons to James Taylor, Wilcox puts his own idiosyncratic stamp on the folk-pop genre.\u00a0 The feat that he has pulled off repeatedly over the years, and achieves again with Open Hand<\/i>, is to balance insightful introspection with witty, wry observational humor.\u00a0 He genuinely appreciates what strange and neurotic creatures human beings are, and that is his fodder, whether he\u2019s contemplating the most effective way to live your life (as on the title track), or goofing on the disappointment of the present not turning out like 20-years-ago science fiction predicted (\u201cModern World\u201d).<\/p>\n

For this particular disc he traveled to Ferndale, California and recorded these songs more or less live in the studio with Dan Phelps producing and a rhythm section of Jon Evans (bass) and James McAlister (drums).\u00a0 Wilcox\u2019s extensive liner notes narrate the process: they only had a week to cut the album, so they rehearsed for three days and then started recording, trying to get every song within the first couple of takes if they could.\u00a0 The end results are typically warm and engaging, but these without-a-net performances have an extra edge to them that Wilcox comments on in the liner notes, and he\u2019s not kidding himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cDream Again\u201d is a tough opener, a searching examination of the psyche of 2009 America, the boom and the bust, the exhilaration followed by the crash, and the darkness beyond.\u00a0 It\u2019s quiet and somber and steady and penetrating — in other words, remarkable.\u00a0 Next up, \u201cRed Eye\u201d finds Wilcox playing with your expectations by nailing a Jack Johnson campfire-philosopher vibe, complete with ocean-breeze groove.\u00a0 It\u2019s another insightful tune about how we rationalize negative or ambivalent memories into more tolerable ones, like taking out the red eye in Photoshop.<\/p>\n

The powerful title track falls third and is followed by \u201cHow Long,\u201d a very pretty, rather driving song that finds Wilcox asking the basic questions about life and not getting answers, but persisting in asking.\u00a0 \u201cWinter On The Shore\u201d is where the serious tone of the first four tracks begins to turn a corner, a sleepy, bluesy reminiscence of a summer love that\u2019s passed by, but still feels sweet in memory.\u00a0 The tone and atmospherics are pitch-perfect for the subject matter.<\/p>\n

From there, Wilcox switches it up steadily.\u00a0 The sunny, wry \u201cModern World\u201d flows into a pair of rather somber tracks (\u201cOutside Door & \u201cVow Of Silence\u201d) before we get to the brilliantly funny \u201cCaptain Wanker.\u201d\u00a0 Skewering the inner jerk lurking inside us all, Wilcox rails against road-ragers, line-cutters and miscellaneous other varieties of self-centered prickishness.\u00a0 Even here, Wilcox finds the humanity inside the obnoxious but clearly tortured personality he\u2019s sketching \u2013 \u201cHis pride will hide the side that no one knows.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then, he\u2019s talking to Jesus.<\/p>\n

No, really, the snarky \u201cCaptain Wanker\u201d transitions straight into \u201cBeyond Belief,\u201d a wise and heartfelt conversation with Jesus about judgment and faith.\u00a0 It\u2019s a remarkable switchup, and it takes a special kind of artist to make it work.\u00a0 It works.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Closing things out, \u201cNot From Here\u201d finds Wilcox saluting a lover so wonderful he can\u2019t believe she\u2019s from this planet, and \u201cRiver Run Dry\u201d delivers a powerful message about seizing the moment and living life to its fullest: \u201cI want to sweat through every pore running faster when it’s hot \/ And catch up to who I can be, and drop the things I’m not \/ And be sure by the end I gave it all I’ve got.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilcox is a remarkable guitarist — he employs a range of unique tunings and works tones out of his acoustic I\u2019ve never heard anyone else uncover \u2013 but it\u2019s his singing style that really brings out the warmth and personality of his music.\u00a0 He enunciates every word clearly and takes great care about the words and lines he chooses to emphasize.\u00a0 The effect of this attention to detail is that Wilcox succeeds in pacing every song for maximum build and impact.<\/p>\n

Open Hand<\/i> is among Wilcox\u2019s strongest latter-day offerings, an album full of winning, witty, insightful tunes by one of the most talented (and underappreciated) singer-songwriters of his generation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[8518],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-41856","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-david-wilcox","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41856","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=41856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41856"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41856"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}