Rating: 3/5
Review:
OK, but nothing special
I hadn't heard of Kevin Brown before but was persuaded to
try this album by a rave review by Terry Roland on No Depression which said
that Book Of Skies was "a strong contender for one of the best releases of
Americana music by a
singer-songwriter this year." I'm
afraid that for me it certainly isn't.
This is an album of nice, tastefully arranged songs:
acoustic guitar, gentle fiddle, subtle banjo, a bit of pedal steel…you get the
picture. There's absolutely nothing
wrong with any of it, but it's just rather ordinary. The material is OK, with the odd decent line;
High Horse, for example, deals with the damage done by entrenched political
attitudes. It's not bad, but it lacks
much in the way of real bite either lyrically or musically, and I felt the same
pretty well throughout the album. At a
time when there's so much decent Americana
around, this certainly didn’t stand out from the crowd for me.
In a year which has seen the release of really fine work by
people like Jason Isbell, Emily Barker, Patty Griffin, Ana Egge and plenty of
others, I'm afraid this is nowhere near contending for best Americana
album. I think it's OK but nothing more,
and I can only give it a very lukewarm recommendation.
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