David McFarlane is a Toronto singer-songwriter, visual artist, and multi-instrumentalist. His sophomore album, Fieldwork<\/i>, highlights his timeless melodies well, as the self-described alt-folk sounds unfold with layered vocals, contributions on pedal steel, violin and percussion, and, perhaps most noteworthy, strong lyrical work that’s clever, insightful and eloquent. <\/p>\n
\u201cMiss Kubelik\u201d starts the album with crunchy guitars, warm vocals, and a dense yet playful spirit of subdued alt-rock meet country rock. \u201cRiver Of News\u201d follows with an adventurous jangle that resides closer to roots rock territory. Elsewhere, the mood becomes quieter with the acoustic soulfulness of \u201cAs Usual,\u201d while the multi-faceted instrumental \u201cThe Life And Death Of Tom Thompson\u201d weaves in and out of prog-like moments as well as fuller bouts of thick rock ‘n’ roll while still maintaining a rustic spirit. <\/p>\n
The back half of the listen is just as impressive. \u201cRongwrong\u201d yields a charming and playful folk-rocker that sounds right out of the ’60s, and \u201cCaledonia\u201d recruits strategic blues riffs to reel us in to the lush rocker. Near the end, \u201cYou Always\u201d offers a stark, mysterious, and eventually ethereal affair sans vocals, and \u201cPattern Of You\u201d exits the record with a restrained, ambient, simmering tension that that’s as cautious as it is mesmerizing. <\/p>\n
An artist who is very proud of his Canadian heritage and often references his home country in his subject matter, McFarlane is in great company here with Brad Kilpatrick (The Once, Adam Baldwin, Dan Mangan, etc.) on drums, bass, and vibraphone. McFarlane’s family often contribute on vocals and violin, too. Although I wouldn’t say McFarlane sounds much like him, his strong songwriting prowess, and careful attention to atmosphere, and diverse delivery draw parallels to fellow Canadian Daniel Romano. And, if you’re familiar with Romano’s work, you’ll realize that’s about as big a compliment as you’re going to get out of anyone. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":33798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10366],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-45619","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-david-mcfarlane","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45619","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\/89"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45619"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}