Striking collaboration between Irish and Canadian singer-songwriters
Singer-songwriters Stephen Fearing and Andy White have released numerous albums under their own names and in groups (notably Blackie and the Rodeo, and ALT), but this turns out to be only their second as a pair. Now living on opposite sides of the globe (Fearing in Halifax, White in Melbourne), the album was written in a two intense face-to-face sessions and recorded six months later with Gary Craig on drums. The material ranges from strummed folk songs to mid-tempo pop and to surprisingly heavy guitar rock, with moments that recall the Warren Zevon, Eric Clapton and Rockpile.
The duo’s songs are rife with accumulated wisdom and the craft that comes from practice. Their experience as performers is evident in the multiple ways their music supports their words. The strummed guitars and confident vocal of “Secret of a Long-Lasting Love” remain buoyant as the lyric’s loneliness and desire lead to reunion and consummation. A sense of optimism sees failed relationships as pauses rather than endings, and lost souls find paths back home. The funky shuffle “We Came Together” opens with riffs that suggest both T. Rex and the Everly Brothers, and the growling electric rhythm riff provides bedrock for “Sanctuary.”
The album’s ballads suggest the bittersweetness of Nick Lowe’s solo material. “Another Time Another Place” (which seems to give an unconscious nod to Bob Seger’s “We’ve Got Tonight” with its opening vocal hook) meditates on missed opportunities, “Think of Me Like Summer” and “Save Yourself” are pained in their separations but generous with their wishes, and the heartache of leaving in mirrored by the possibility of a new start in the “Emigrant Song.” Fearing and White are each sophisticated troubadours in their own write, but there’s extra magic in their collaboration. [©2014 Hyperbolium] 