(2021) Danny George Wilson - Another Place
Review:
Taking time out from his various ventures with Danny & the Champions of the World and Bennett Wilson Poole, Danny George Wilson has come up with a considerably more experimental album than might have been expected, working with producer/engineer Hamish Benjamin to couch his customary songwriting with electronics and effects. Opening track ‘Lost Future’ lays down the new approach from the start, the simple melodic hollow drums chug overlaid with feedback-like noise, the vocals reminiscent of Dylan as do those of ‘Sincerely Hoping’ which jauntily strums along over an intermittent Wurlitzer whistle, flashed midway with bursts of reverb electric guitar. Opening with a scuffed beat, electronic hisses and solitary keyboard notes, ‘I Wanna Tell You’ sets a strung-out late-night mood as he sings about “searching for shadows” before the electro bubbling emotional anxiety (“Show me something I don’t know/Show me something I could love/Show me something/Better than this”) Heaven For Hiding kicks it back into a more buoyant whirligig frame of musical mind. The catchiest number on the album, Can You Feel Me? opens with an amusing nod to Carly Simon in the self-mockingly preening lines “I’m so vain I’ll probably write this song about me”, proceeding by way of the tree falling in the forest conundrum, to muse on whether love exists if it’s not spoken (“Would you know how I feel about you/If I don’t say how I’m feeling about you?”), channelling early REM via Neil Young on the chorus hook. By contrast, again evoking the laid back Harvest-era sounds of Young, the near six-minute Right Place floats along on dreamy theremin-like washes, electric piano, strummed acoustic and a steady rhythmic chug, upending the relaxed groove with the harsh electronics noise and distortions driving Giving Away Too Much with its mixed back echoey vocals and urgent, jittery drum pattern. Two unlikely covers follow it, first up, a keyboards-led funky piano-pop take on Spirit’s We’ve Got A Lot Learn with its electronics recalling George Harrison’s guitar line on My Sweet Lord, featuring both backing vocals from Gerry Love and guest guitar solo by Jeff Tweedy and then, by way of a pop culture shift, a lovely shimmering keyboard backed duet with Emma Swift on Frank Sinatra’s I Would Be In Love (Anyway) from his 1979s concept album Watertown. Counted in and built around muted drums and keyboards, it ends with the romantic, lush, languorous Neil Young goes trip-hop styled Inbetween The Love, drifting off into the ether on a final flurry of fractured piano notes. A departure from his more familiar Americana sound, it might take a few plays to get under the skin of his longtime followers, but give it time to infuse, and it will indeed take you to another place, one that’s well worth the journey. — folkradio.co.uk
Track Listing:
1.Lost Future 04:30
2.Sincerely Hoping 03:33
3.I Wanna Tell You 04:42
4.Heaven for Hiding 03:50
5.Can You Feel Me? 03:26
6.Right Place 05:49
7.Giving Away Too Much 04:14
8.We've Got a Lot to Learn 02:40
9.I Would Be in Love (Anyway) 03:03
10.Inbetween the Love 04:17
Media Report:
Genre: folk-rock, indie-rock
Country: UK
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
