Review - David Shane Smith: love songs and wintertower

From the Urban Folk May 2007 Issue:

I have two David Shane Smith albums. Both came in origami slipcovers made from old magazine pages. “love songs” is written in red pencil on the first disc. The second reads “wintertower.”

If you asked me to pick one to keep and one to give up, I’d have a hard time choosing. Many musicians follow a slow evolution from one album to the next, but these two are different.

“love songs” has a timeless quality that makes it difficult to pin down. Each song has a striking sense of immediacy, but remains unbranded by a specific period or style. Lilting melodies contrast sharply with haunting narration. Insomniac poems are punctuated with acoustic guitar, bells, and timpani.

Smith does an about-face on “wintertower,” a slippery electronic hybrid of looped beats and manipulated sounds, where the territory between rap and spoken word becomes too tangled to navigate.

This is a risky venture for someone perceived as a singer/songwriter. Smith embraces it and delivers an absorbing work. On “love songs” most of the vocals were fragile and restrained while “wintertower” teems with rumbles, drones, and squalls.

Each disc holds nine songs. I listen to track seven on “wintertower” which shares the album’s name, a stormy collage of electric guitar and manufactured sounds. Then I skip back to “love songs” and listen to track seven, “in your night,” a dark lullaby punctuated with barely audible whispers. You can get your hands on both at www.myspace.com/davidshanesmith.

Categories: Media, Music, Reviews, David, Shane, Smith, Love, Songs, Wintertower, UrbanFolk