Forest Sun
Album: Just Begun
Label: Painted Sun
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.forestsun.com

San Francisco Bay Area songwriter Forest Sun has been around for over a decade now, purveying his own brand of back-porch-troubadour Americana at festivals and house concerts, and equally at home in both. He founded his own label, Painted Sun, back in 1999 for his debut release, and yet I'd never encountered his music before his 2008 album Harlequin Goodnight arrived unsolicited in my to-listen pile. It proved a pleasing and rewarding collection that for some reason passed its sell-by date before it reached the top priority deck, so his day on my review stage has had to wait until receipt of a new record by Forest Sun - now, some years down the line (during which time he's released at least two more records!).

Anyway, Just Begun delivers another reliable collection of songs, this time all original compositions and no covers. Forest Sun's guitar and occasional piano are attractively and smoothly accompanied by a small-ish ensemble of trusty acoustic musicians (including Jared Tyler, Jesse Aycock and some new-found friends from the bands Calexico and Iron & Wine), and the overall effect is of an artist relaxed and contented with his own creativity while eager to communicate this laid-back, at-ease-with-the-world-and-himself vibe to his audience. Many of the songs also benefit from some neat vocal harmonies from his regular touring partner Ingrid Serban, and these (rather than those with fuller musical arrangements) inevitably provide the disc's high points. Forest's vocal style has been compared to Jack Johnson, but the dominant vibe is its easy, can't-go-wrong accessibility.

The songs themselves are genial, masterful and rootsy without being earth-shatteringly powerful (not that they need to be); mostly in a loosely-country or folksy Californian country-rock vein, and when not reflecting on matters of love tending to hang free with the atmosphere of the south-western desert towns of Arizona (this mood extending into the disc's lone instrumental cut El Coyote). One or two of the songs (It's Good To See You, for instance) rely on an old-fashioned bonhomie that now sounds a touch dated, but by and large Forest's writing is timeless. For there's often a sense of rediscovering songs you think you might know from somewhere back - Nostalgic Bells, Just My Size and Take That Wander all give that strong impression. And after you've played the album through, odds are that you'll want to take most of the journey over again real soon.

David Kidman