All the boats are gonna rise – Ernest Troost ***1/2
Resurrection blues – Ernest Troost ****
Real music.
Live at McCabe’s was a first introduction to a man with a calling. That CD proved to be Ernest Troost’s third, because the composer of film music already debuted as a bluesy folkie in 2004.
Troost plays and sings his thirteen songs solo on All boats are gonna rise, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar and sometimes on harmonica too.
That way it attracts all the more attention how strong his melodies are and how well he sings. Troost’s songs breathe respect for acoustic blues and folk, but are constructed carefully at the same time, while his vocals betray subdued emotions.
It makes no difference whether he sings about the fate of New Orleans after Katrina from within or about the regret of a wrongfully not convicted murderer. Because of his compact songs and his propelling guitar playing he also convinces in songs about sadistic mother love, the paranoia of a archetypical American patriot or the trek to California in the twenties.
The thirteen songs he recorded in 2009 with musical friends like singer Nicole Gordon also prove Troost’s broad perspective on blues and folk.
In a somewhat richer musical setting Troost and co-producer Louise Hatem again stress the intimate character of the songs by means of the sparse instrumentation in a crystal-clear production.
Once again rounded melodies and his original lyrics make his second record a small masterpiece on which pangs of love, longing and murderers alternate. That way he made two CD’s full of timeless miniatures that still deserve to be heard.