To my delight, another Canuck has impressed me with his fouray into the making of great music. The kind of music that despite being part of the same album, has the ability to range from full on folk to indie rock ballad. This album was such a nice surprise that I find myself immediately putting something online – I just received the album 2 days ago in the mail at Slowcoustic HQ.
The 10 track collage that is “House on a Hill” is not unlike the photo above. The album could be placed in almost any hillside field, but the chosen location above seems to be where it would finally settle. Not that a great singer-songwriter with folk Americana leanings needs to be on the back porch of a house that is located at the end of a dusty drive, it just seems to sound that way. Maybe it is the fact that crafting songs alone on the “back porch” would give one time to feel the warm breeze that just might take the song to the next level. While this back porch might be located in the space between the farmlands of rural Ontario (Canada) and the hard concrete of city centres and market streets of London (Ontario).
With the world today, you get songwriters that seem more matured than one would expect. Don’t confuse a “hard life” with “being worldly” as believe not every life experience translates into great basis for music – but when you hear it, you know it. This is an album where you feel you might know it, there seems to be someone who has the chops, but has range of more than just the everyday guitar laden cowboy. There is help on this musical journey from Drummer Brad Marsh and Bassist Adam Cake who put down the foundation that “moves from the consistent drive of an old diesel engine to the laid back groove of an urban cafe“.
From piano acoustic ballads: “Love Song” & “Tonight” to the aching harmonica: “A Story” & “Fire Elegy” and with accents of honky tonk: “Lead Me” and watering hole rock of “Rules” – there are many rooms to this house that Fraser has built.
Listen to Fraser on MySpace and his emerging Website or pick up a copy of the new album on CD Baby.
~Smansmith