Northeast singer-songwriter returns with a strong set of originals

It’s been six years since Mark Erelli released a new set of original material. In that time he’s played with Lori McKenna, Josh Ritter and Paula Cole (the latter of whom appears on two tracks here), recorded two albums with Barnstar, and released Milltowns in tribute to Bill Morrissey. Rather than taking on a coat of solo songwriter rust, Erelli’s pen has been refilled by the hiatus. His singing voice is still reminiscent of Paul Simon, but these gentle electric productions show the time off was spent sharpening his already sharp songcraft.

The album opens solemnly with a northerner’s loneliness amid the midwest’s wide-open spaces, contemplates the day’s emotional harvest and the next day’s challenges, and mulls over the existential questions that lay in the twilight. He venerates the extraordinary of the everyday in the know-how of a fixit man (“Analog Hero”), a contemplative janitor (“Look Up”) and a Dutch busker (“Netherlands”). The details of his descriptions are extraordinary, and the galloping lyric of “Wayside” demonstrates his talent for shaping words into music.

His facility is equally well spent in poetic observations of a river’s destiny (“French King”) as it is in a meditation on aging (“Magic”) or love song (“Hourglass”). And his voice fits as easily into acoustic guitar laments as full-band arrangements. He’s accumulated numerous songwriting awards over the years, but as the title of his latest album attests, his greatest reward is in writing and performing songs. This collection he takes his already estimable talents to an extraordinary new level. [©2016 Hyperbolium]

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