DC Cardwell creates a heart felt acoustic gem here, full of wonderful melodic hooks and a Ray Davies styled vocal. The gentle minor chords and harmonies that open “I Am Still The Same” are both brilliant and poignant. Digression: I think the decades most overlooked instrument on recent casual classics is the xylophone, I mean it’s on every good easy listening hit from Pampelmoose to iphone commericals.
Anyway, “Birthday Present” is another example of solid composition and a revelatory Harrison styled guitar break. The pace picks up with the bouncy “Peace and Love” at it’s most Kinks-like and then it veers to Dylanesque territory the next bunch of tracks like “Way With Words” and “Meet The Author.” The country-like pop bounce returns on “A Minute Of Your Time” and “We Fell” has that smooth guitar jangle. A few miss, but most here hit the mark and with a whopping 16 tracks to go through, you’ll find several favorites here. Some of the mid-tempo ballads (“The Quiet Ages”) are like magical combinations of both Paul Simon and McCartney. Fans of David Mead and John Southworth should also flock to this release like ants to a picnic. And yeah, it’s a belated 2010 top rated album. This is a perfect year ending release, so put away your “Auld Lang Syne” and play this.
