Michael Feuerstack
Album: The Forgettable Truth
Label: Forward Music
Tracks: 12
Website: http://michaelfeuerstack.com

Having previously recorded under the moniker Snailhouse, Canadian roots rocker, Michael Feuerstack, has thrown caution to the wind and released his latest album, "The Forgettable Truth" under his own name.

It's not surprising that with an established recorded as a songwriter, a fair chunk of the new album is very much narrative lead as the songs take you through a number of lyrical twists and turns to ensure that you are actually listening to what you're hearing. What is more surprising is that, unlike his previous albums, he seems to be happy to allow the songs to escape and find the space to be different. It's less an album with a distinctive sound, rather an album that allows the poetry of lyric to dictate the sound of the song, rather than the other way around.

The result is an album that not only hits hard, when required it also finds a velvet glove to ensure that you are not getting pounded from one track to the next. I guess it may also be the reason why he's put his own name on it, because it feels much more like a songwriters album, an album written for the enjoyment of writing, rather than to find a preconception that's expected of you.

The result is that "The Forgettable Truth" is anything but. I think it's the strongest album that he's put together. He assembled a good core of musicians around him, to ensure that the arrangements do the core songs justice and delivered an album that reaches out to people and rewards the efforts put in on both sides of the speakers.

Neil King