Written as usual with his first-thing-in-the-morning, stream-of-consciousness technique, the singer-songwriter Eric D. Johnson, also one-third of the folk trio Bonny Light Horseman, returns with a new collection of melodic, often beautiful, and profound, reflective, gentle, folky rock now 30 years since the first album. With that distinctive nasal, yet affecting voice, he carries these songs with a definite presence. From the opening meta-number The Saddest Part Of The Song, the touching All Wounds (“Time heals all wounds” is a thing they say / But haven’t always found it to be that way”); the shimmering missing-you number That Goddam Sun (“Look at those California poppies / Look at that mama spider crawlin’ up a bougainvillea vine / I still think about you whеn it’s rainin’ / And I’m sittin’ around waiting”); the acoustic, powerfully stirring toe-tapper Perhaps We’re A Storm (“It’s the climax in slow motion / But an eyedrop in the ocean/ I was born in a soybean field / How’d I make it all the way here? / Wide eyed and stumbling / Wondering”), all the way to the wonderful final and title track, in which he also acknowledges his veteran status at nearly 50 (“This is an ode to eternity / Sung by an old show pony / In this long, slow rodeo / I’ve come to know / Lookin’ down from the landfill / I can see the city lights a-shimmerin’/ And it’s like a holy vision of/ What could be / And couldn’t be / And could have been”) with soaring guitar and Dylan-esque moments, there is no doubting the strength and craft of Johnson’s songwriting. Along the journey, quieter moments on Silverfish in the Sink and the beautiful, soaring WIld Pony Tower Moment, with unexpected chord changes and perhaps his strongest vocal performances, or the perky, bluesy Fishin’ For A Vision, also make this a golden treasure of a release. Out on Merge Records.
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