Cam Penner
Album: Gypsy Summer
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 11
Website: www.campenner.com/

Cam Penner's warm blanket of a voice lets you believe that for all the high times and low rides he sings about everything's gonna be OK in the end. He sings of things getting worse before they get better, of pitching up in another rich man's town, of heartaches, of finding time to look up in the hour of need…

Far from woeful, Gypsy Summer celebrates life as Cam knows it. The Canadian singer songwriter grew up in an illegal roadhouse and left home at 18 to join a commune in Chicago, working with the Windy City's homeless folk. These are the things that grant the gift of perspective and it's that very human quality that shines through these songs drawn from Penner's experience of the lives of others.

Gypsy Summer is a well-crafted album with an old-fashioned Side A and Side B that speak to one another. The opening Driftwood acts as a mission statement for what follows, with its notes of optimism shining through the gloom. Flesh & Bone is a delightfully simple take on humanity with Penner's plaintive voice flirting with a Caleb Followill vocal tick. Further on, My Lover & I lays down a big beat complete with funky bass and Throw Your Hands Up piles on the drums

Gypsy Summer is a deceptively straightforward album in which literate songs are allowed room to breathe according to mood. If you're looking for comparisons you need to be thinking in terms of Neil Young, Traffic, Paul Simon, Slim Chance, but you'd be far better served taking this record exactly as it comes.

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk