John Butler Trio: "Sunrise over sea"
Its about 7:30 and you stumble over some pot smoking hippies at your local "Blues and roots festival"accdently knocking over there bong, but there too stoned to notice, you walk past a row of guitars with broken strings and snapped necks, finally you make you way through the wall of pot smoke and stager into a crowd full of people, calmly swaing.Its like nothing you"ve ever seen before the people seem mesmerized not by drugs or something horrific but by something so meaningful being sung, something that seems to warm to your soul and leaves a heart shaped imprint on it. You look up and see a grizzly hippie with dread locks and a rather large goatee, a double bass being splayed next to him and drums being played with jazz sticks ever so lightly behind him. Who else could I be referring to but John Butler and his band of merry men?
John Butler is something beautiful and enchanting. He doesn"t have the most pure voice (but Kurt Coabin didn"t ether and he had one of the most moving voices of the century) but somehow makes you want to listen on with intrge.What he does with his guitar is so inspiring he creates magical musical land scapes (nothing like "Pink Floyd") that seem to carry on for miles but you don"t care because you no your going some place pure.
The first thing that strikes you about this album is that John only uses a acoustic guitar, a slide (I think some times it could be just a WAH peddle but im not sure, and might I add that his WAH is something reminiscent of "Jimi Hendrix").throughout the majority of the cd he follows the same format intro-verse-chrous-verse-chrous-solo then back to the chorus and usually fades out. Some listeners may find that the only down fall of the album the repetivnes and sometimes the singing sounds the same.Personaly I think that he makes up for this with the magnificent tracks "peaches and cream" and "sometimes". The overall all sound is hard to describe or categorize, his vocals sound somewhat folky and some times (don"t shower me with bullets here) but at one point he does sound like Eddie Vetter from "Pearl Jam". The only person I think I can compare him to guitar wise would be "Tommy Emmanuel" only on account of the long parts of just guitar strumming and just jamming that goes no were(im not saying that that is a bad thing it is a very much good thing in my eyes).
John Butler trio is one of Australians finest exports I have come across. Overall this album warmed to me like no other. It"s just something about it that makes you fall in love with it. By now you can probly tell that my review is a bit biast but just listen to "peaches and cream" and you will see.
STAND OUT TRACKS:
Peaches and cream
Sometimes
What you want
Seeing angels
p.s don"t shower me with abuse this is one of my first reviews and I would like you (the readers) to reply maturely and act like civil adults not like snotty little 14 year olds who get there daddy"s to fight there wars for them.
