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* "i can hear your voice in the wind..."

Glancing over today's new releases on our "Please Release Me" page, the name of Cliff Eberhardt caught my eye. He has a new one out today on Red House Records titled The High Above And The Down Below, which, listening now to the advance that arrived a couple weeks ago, sounds pretty decent in that trusted Red House folk-based singer-songwriter vein.

For me, though, seeing Eberhardt's name brought back memories of an album he put out a long time ago, one that never quite got the attention it deserved, from where I stood. His 1990 debut The Long Road came out on Windham Hill, during a time when that label, renowned for its instrumental new-age recordings by the likes of George Winston and Michael Hedges, was putting out feelers in folk directions. They brought John Gorka and Patty Larkin on board for brief tenures, and also signed Eberhardt, a relative unknown from the East Coast acoustic circuit.

Apparently his music didn't leave much impression on the label, which didn't include one of his songs their recent Windham Hill 30th Anniversary box set. All these years later, though, many of that record's songs still linger in my mind.

The Long Road probably did well enough to give Eberhardt a boost that helped him continue and sustain a career since then, but it wasn't the kind of breakthrough that, say, Steady On was for Shawn Colvin right around the same time. That's an apt comparison given that Colvin guests on "White Lightning", one of the more memorable tracks on The Long Road.

It's also apt because those two albums were quite similar in one very salient aspect: Both were positively loaded with really strong folk-pop material. So much so, in fact, that either artist could quite easily take a stage today and play nothing but songs from their respective debut albums, and the audience would not be shortchanged in the slightest.

The song I remember most is probably "Always Want To Feel Like This", a bold declaration that those most emotional moments are worth reaching for. "Your Face" is maybe a close second; Eberhardt's weary then soaring vocal perfectly delivers the deep longing that drives the tune. The opening "My Father's Shoes" and "Right Now" are more upbeat and urgent in their expressivness, while the title track receives a soulful boost from guest vocalist Richie Havens. "Voyeur" would be a bit of a novelty except that Eberhardt sells the song so well, he convinces you his narrator is more honorable than the song's title suggests. (Probably; there's just enough ambiguity to keep things intriguing.) The aforementioned "White Lightning" is a brilliant mood piece; "That Kind Of Love" is an admirably simple, no-nonsense love song; and "Goodnight" is a perfect closing track, essentially a lullaby but injected with the same sort of dramatic/melodic flair that runs through the entirety of the album.

Sometimes records like this -- great first efforts that didn't ultimately make any big waves -- get lost in the shuffle. This one shouldn't.

adios,
peter

Posted by peter on April 10, 2007 5:08 PM | Permalink