Dale Boyle
Album: Throwback
Label: Factor
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.daleboyle.com

Dale Boyle is based in Montreal, and Throwback is listed as his fourth solo collection, tho' confusingly, his website only lists three. But Dale wears his accomplishment very lightly, and his singing voice, which has been likened to a slightly warmer and more thoughtful version of Springsteen, is both attractively intimate and full of character. Throwback, on which Dale utilises simple but effective instrumental setting involving just his own guitar and the slide or mandolin or fiddle of Michael Jerome Browne for the most part, includes seven of Dale's own compositions (one co-written with Rob Lutes), which apart from one elegant yet at times also percussively driven fingerpicked instrumental (Spin) are reflective and memorable in a tried-and-tested folk-country mould, familiar-sounding yet without being derivative.

The title track references this theme in its timeless melancholy twang and feeling of simple longing for old times. The opener All Gone Now could've come from the Woody Guthrie songbook to a chugging mandolin vibe filtered through early Steve Earle, whereas You Might Come Around (a lovely true-duet with former Wailin' Jennys inmate Annabelle Chvostek, who also provides backing vocal support on a further three songs) is as haunting a slice of alt-country heartbreak as you're likely to hear, and Unsung is a masterpiece of gentle observation, whereas the reassuring When You Wake seems to cross the sensibility of early James Taylor and the backporch feel of Gillian Welch. Dale also does a nice line in contrasting covers, with a surprisingly delicate take on Tom Petty's defiant Won't Back Down, a sparky version of Baby Please Don't Go and perhaps best of all, a tasty, quite unusually phrased version of Stephen Foster's Hard Times. In common with Dale's own songs, these covers are brilliantly economic in their scope and execution. So it seems churlish, but I'm afraid necessary, to complain that this seriously exquisite and immensely likeable treasure of an album is way too short at only 27 minutes!

David Kidman