Everybody starts somewhere; Santa Monica Pier busker-cum-outlaw country artist-cum-contemporary folk singer-songwriter Ben Bostick started here.<\/p>\n
Fifteen years ago Bostick set off from his home in South Carolina and rambled from town to town across the country, eventually landing a decade later in LA. Busking country songs on the Santa Monica Pier might not sound like the greatest launchpad for an aspiring singer-songwriter, but it worked out for Bostick; he made enough in tips to record this EP, and has issued four increasingly sophisticated and powerful albums since. At just five songs, this debut EP is basically an hors d\u2019ouevre for the rest of Bostick\u2019s work, but it\u2019s mighty tasty.<\/p>\n
Bostick\u2019s self-produced opening salvo kicks off with \u201cMy Country,\u201d a rowdy mission statement-turned-anthem that doubles as an homage to his musical heroes, traditional \/ outlaw country icons like Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson. The tune itself is just what you want from this sort of thing: tight, punchy, stacked with sly references and brimming with genuine affection. Bostick\u2019s point is that this is the real country music, as opposed to the formulaic commercial poseur dreck that dominates mainstream country radio today.<\/p>\n
Next up, \u201cSweet Maria\u201d is a melodic Latin-inflected barroom number featuring nice piano work from Robert Bowlus as Oto\u00f1o Lujan\u2019s accordion warms the atmosphere while also giving this a bit of a Mavericks feel. \u201cRunning On Fuel\u201d follows with a sunburst of humor as Bostick parodies the sterotypical barroom weeper expertly, exploding every clich\u00e9 of that type of song by exaggerating them to the Nth degree until you\u2019re laughing instead of crying. <\/p>\n
\u201cFade To Blue\u201d changes things up again, as one should on a release this brief, offering a nice start-to-finish build from slow and atmospheric to big and booming and arena-sized; it\u2019s impressive in construction and execution, all the more so given its deadly serious subject matter of addiction. Bostick closes with \u201cWait For Me,\u201d a thoughtful acoustic ballad that\u2019s as much a song of devotion as one of romance, about the kind of deep love that makes you want to be with someone no matter the hardships involved. In that sense it\u2019s a preview of later work on albums like Among The Faceless Crowd<\/i> and Grown Up Love<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The magic trick Bostick pulls off here is to give you range and wit and self-awareness and honesty enough for a full album in just five songs. This EP features funny songs and serious ones, loud ones and quiet ones, gentle ones and rascally ones, all thoughtfully crafted and performed with real intention. My Country<\/i> might have amounted to little more than a stepping-stone in Ben Bostick\u2019s catalog, but it was a damned good first step.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":34425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10172],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-46264","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-ben-bostick","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46264","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=46264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46264"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}