Reviewed by Ian Corcoran
Very few times in life do I get to hear a voice that cuts through, touches and makes sense, and then there’s the sounds… Nowadays is Cyndi Boste’s fifth album, and her first in seven years. The album starts off with the driving ‘Open your Mind’, Jeremy Edwards electric licks riding beneath and coming to the fore.
‘Goodness Gracious Me’ is a wry reading on our present consumerist culture. “Starts out, it’s all good, everyone is smiling, A few years and stuff appears” leading to the eventual “A big house, a shiny car, Must have lots of money, Chained to a fantasy. Goodness gracious me” indeed.
‘I’m Outta Here (Ballad of Chris Green)’ is the stuff of Woody/Christy Moore/Springsteen – a great tale of a fellow traveller of Boste’s. ’Rectify’, ‘Look Out Ma’ could be classified as country rockers.
Soulful ballads – ‘Happy Day’, ‘On My Mind’, ‘Deep Down Below’, ‘I Like It’ evoke the kind of things that cross your mind driving through the landscape with Roy Payne’s pedal steel carrying us through. Stories of regret, hope and redemption bringing us to the final destination of ‘Lasted So Long’, a ballad straight to the point “There’s no happy ever afters, No forevers after all”
There is not one bit of filler on this recording. Each song is straight to the point. A bit of a relief these days.
Some singer-songwriters make a career singing about the dust bowl days. Very few make it out of a career that dealt them a dust bowl deal; Cyndi Boste has. Make sure you pick up her album and see her play this summer.
