Terry Kitchen
Album: The Post-American Century
Label: Urban Campfire
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.terrykitchen.com

The Post-American Century is Boston-based singer-songwriter Terry’s followup to his 2009 album Summer To Snowflakes, and encompasses a comparable breadth of human experience within its taut, insightful, and often wry vignettes. Whether upbeat or downbeat, happy or sad, they don’t fail to connect with the listener’s emotions, and Terry’s eye for detail is both uncanny and unerring, supplying tales and situations with which we can identify even if the actual minutiae and/or specific circumstance is further removed from our own direct experience.

Parallels can always be drawn though, as in Tall Against The Wave, where the terror and futility of war are voiced by a Confederate infantryman, and the touching Sequel, which posits an overheard conversation between two “sixties survivors” trying to find their place in the confusion of this new century. The theme of loss is poignantly explored on Stay Forever and its uncredited coda (the disc’s brief bonus track One More Sunset), while loss of faculties through Alzheimer’s brings a role-reversal scenario that’s described on Mommy Come Quick. The comforts of faith and home values are brought to the fore on two of the album’s most immediately appealing tracks, Rock Of Ages and So Much More To Home, both of which cuts enjoy a tasty, rootsy musical setting (gospel and bluegrass respectively). Praise for the exquisitely-turned musical arrangements can’t be avoided here, for the playing of Roger Williams (dobro), Bob Harris (mandolin), Chris Devine (violin) and Brice Buchanan (guitar) ably complement Terry’s own soft-toned, honestly expressive vocal confidences and dependable instrumental skills (guitar, mandolin, autoharp and harmonica). Special mention too, for guest singer Mara Levine’s contributions: duet vocal on the seriously country-flavoured Eternity and harmony vocals on three other cuts.

Just occasionally, I detect more than a hint of overt preachiness, as on the Pete-Seeger-esque One By One which (somewhat obviously) explores the tragedy of racism in today’s society. But overall, Terry’s tried-and-tested modus operandi is quality, perceptive contemporary songwriting with an acute awareness of the human condition. His choice of cover material, unsurprisingly therefore, is fitting: just Neil Diamond’s I’m A Believer, here shorn of its customary Monkee-some poppiness and breezily bestriding a snappy riff more reminiscent of the Beatles’ Getting Better. Confident and unashamedly quirky, but it hits the spot in the company of Terry’s own compositions.

David Kidman