Shadville Records
lightning bolt
American singer-songwriter Rees Shad made his debut in 1994 and since released seventeen solo albums in a variety of genres, while also making four electronic music albums under the name Fester Spunk, as well as composing an operetta and music for plays and films. In these fourteen songs, however, Shad limits himself to Americana, although in some songs influences from blues, gospel and South American come into play. He played bass, dobro, acoustic and electric guitars, acoustic and electric piano and he sings, but in about half of his songs he is accompanied by Rob ‘Bobby Kay’ Kovacs on drums and percussion and Jeff Link on bass. Other relatively decisive roles are for Kemp Harris and Wanda Houston, who sing on four songs, and co-producer Doug Ford. Together with Shad, he was responsible for the transparent sound and he played guitar a few times, just like Rick Ruskin and Dario Acosta Teich.
In two songs horn players Marcus Benoit (tenor sax), Peter Grimaldi (trumpet) and John Savage (baritone sax) also play and in two others harmonica player R. B. Stone. In his songs, often written alone and sometimes with Lance Cowan, Shad turns out to be a man with a great sense of flowing melodies and the ability to write visual, narrative lyrics about the daughter of a nineteenth-century day labourer, a father who is absent because he pursues his own dreams and a woman abandoned by everyone. Some others are polemical, such as opener ‘Ain’t that The Way’, in which he sings about
how it pays to speak your mind: ‘Speak truth to power brings the liars down/ You can change up the way this world goes ’round’, the equally fierce, electric ‘Thumbing the Scales’ and the deceptively light-footed ‘Brighter Daze’. He also sings a number of introspective, autobiographical-sounding ballads about love and loss.
He does this with languid ease, stretching his words emotionally at and sometimes gnarling ironically and nasally in an open mix. In addition to his vocals, rootsy guitars are always at the centre, because the other musicians not only play what they can, but also only what they have to play to put the song first. Although most of the songs are acoustic, electric songs ‘Thumbing the Scales’, ‘A Man Like Me’ and ‘Pistol Whip Hangover’ fit well into this surprisingly cohesive whole due to the same approach, the inspired playing and the enthusiastic vocals of Shad’s musicians. As an encore, Shad put two more of these songs on the album as ‘back porch songs’, as if he knew in advance how much of an impression he would make with this album.
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