Acoustic strings and pastoral vocals have always been a tried and true combination, and when they’re presented together in the new album Philadelphia from Eric Colville, they feel especially pristine. Colville doesn’t come into Philadelphia with a lot of swagger – instead, he has a rather insular persona that he sports in “The Dash,” “35 & Thinking,” “Angel,” and the album’s brilliant title track suited more for the old school than anything the new is trying right now.
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This isn’t to call him old-fashioned per se; there just happens to be a lot of Springsteen and Young sewn into the bones of his sound, and he’s rocking it in a manner that doesn’t just feel natural but truly organic through and through. “Shadow of a Doubt” and “Afraid to Dance” couldn’t have come from a place of saccharinity, but one of immense passion and honesty. There’s no getting around the personality of this material, and though you could say that the style of this LP is rather formulaic, it’s necessary to present us with as full-bodied a sound as Colville can produce from within a studio.
There are no shortcuts taken in Philadelphia – tracks like “How Come” and “End of War” have a little indulgence in their arrangements, but they offer up a lot more instrumental integrity as a result. The lyrics in “Angel” and “Be Alright” stand on their own just fine, but when meshed with the harmonies they’re framed by, they feel a lot more personal than most of the studio-recorded folk music you’re going to come across this winter.
Symmetry is essential to the flow of these songs, and yet I never get the feeling that I’m listening to something shaped by equality rather than a desire to put something out to the audience, no matter how guarded it might be. Although he follows a core theme of confession from one track to the next, there’s never an instance in which Eric Colville is repeating statements in this album. He’s got a lot to say, and he’s going to get it across to us one way or another.
REVERBNATION: https://www.reverbnation.com/ericcolvilleband/song/27924245-the-dash
The unstoppable melodic presence of this LP is definitely reasoning alone to pick it up sooner than later, and if this is a good preview of what we’re going to be hearing from this songwriter’s camp in the future, he’s going to have a lot more accolades than he’s even getting now. I can’t wait to see if Colville is going to experiment with his sound or stick with the present trajectory he’s on, but in either case, I think he’s presented too good a sampling in Philadelphia to leave his upcoming projects unheard.
There’s no arguing the masterful style of this record, and while I’m seeing more and more quality alternative folk hitting record store shelves this year, I don’t know that there’s another player quite like Eric Colville right now. He’s got more to unpack in his sound, but this is a fantastic spin any way you look at it.
Heather Savage