Although we use the term “singer-songwriter” so ubiquitously and regularly as to suggest it has a set and specific meaning, it is only when you encounter artists like Shawn Brown that you realize how broad a sonic church such a genre is.
As “Hold Fast” demonstrates only too well, the deft and smart songwriter can conform to that label whilst throwing so many outsider elements in, too. Brown is such a songwriter. The song might start in the understated musical lowlands of the singer-songwriter realm, a voice, an acoustic guitar, and just a few additional tones and textures, but it all too soon embraces a more expansive band-driven sound, an energetic beat and additional sonic weight.
Before long, more guitar lines are running along to the rise and fall of the wash of the organ, drums crash, vocals reach for the sky, and we find ourselves in anthemic rock territory. It is only when we look back that we can see just how far we have come, such is the effortless energy of the journey from folky understatement to stadium crescendo.
And this is only the first song on this EP. “Let ‘Them Love Ya” which follows proves that he can do just as much with the most minimal of musical elements as he can when driving that full band sound, here his folk finesse dressed up only with the eerie sounds of the steel pedal. Things are rounded off with an acoustic version of his earlier single “The Sad Ones” a song built as much from atmosphere and sentiment as it is guitar and piano.
Roots-rock? Anthemic Americana? Stadium-ready folk-pop? Understated acoustical. What you call it is the last thing you need to worry about, no one term easily fits all three tracks anyway. The more pressing matter is whether you have bought this masterful collection of songs. And if not, why not?
Website
Facebook
Spotify
Instagram
