Pop professor.
Nik Freitas already has three CDs to his name that went by unnoticed here. Maybe we had never heard of this fourth one either, if Bright Eyes-chief Conor Oberst had not employed him as his guitar player in the meantime. His Team Love-label releases Freitas’ fourth as a result.
As tradition wants it, the man that was a photographer of a skateboard magazine once, plays all the instruments himself again in his ten new self-written songs. Nevertheless, his songs are much richer executed than his boss’s are. For his inspiration he draws mostly from the pop music of the late sixties and the seventies: influences are amongst others Paul McCartney and the Kinks, but a band like Crowded House too.
However, Freitas does much more than imitating stilistically. He wanted to do no less than invent the perfect pop song ten times on the shaky second-hand equipment of his home studio and also succeeded in this difficult task. His melodies prove to be catchy, but richely fitted with counter melodies, for instance played on a prominent bass. On top of unexpected turns Freitas also sprinkles rootsy accents regularly, like a bluesy piano or guitar solos that serve the songs. Still he leaves room, so that his songs find a natural balance.
On top of that moody music Freitas sings phlegmatically melancholic lyrics with moving, polyphonic refrains. Because the form supports the contents, he is ready to be discovered in retrospect. In any case, these ten songs have all the ingredients to become classics.
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Published in Dutch in roots music magazine Heaven no. 59 March-April 2009/no. 2