New Release of Note: Andy Berkhout’s “Love Without Fear”

I missed the official release of the album yesterday, but I actually didn’t post anything yesterday, so that makes it better?  Okay, okay, I really wanted to post and tell you about one of my favourite new albums of the Slowcoustic variety in Andy Berkhout’s “Love Without Fear”.  Andy is no stranger to Slowcoustic with his spot on acoustic takes on life, relationships and makes almost any subject matter sound good.

The new album is 10 tracks that don’t fall far from what we hold dear – acoustic, melody, harmonica and a bit of drawl.  While I don’t classify Andy as an Americana artist, there seems to be a bit of it hiding underneath his singer songwriter exterior.  You might hear a bit in songs like “So Patiently” and “It Takes Two” – just something there.  Then he will turn about and knock you over with stunning beauty in the delicate “Empty Room, Heavy Heart” and combine both Americana and the delicate in “Love’s Deep Embrace” (two of my current favourite tracks).

A little about the album from Andy’s Website:

“The album was recorded at R&R Music Labs, a young studio in St. Louis’ Dogtown neighborhood.  Engineers Ryan Albritton and Ryan Lewis (The Northwoods, Messy Jiverson) experimented with a variety of different room arrangements to capture the acoustic subtleties of the songs.  Much of the album was recorded live with no overdubs.  “I really wanted to make a record that would represent my natural sound, and knew this was the right way to do it,” says Berkhout.”

Andy cut his music making chops with a recent foray into releasing a song every week for a year.  Sounds daunting to say the least and if you followed it on his website you were privy to the growing talent of Andy as a songwriter and performer.  The series included better songs than most albums these days and it was a treat to get soo much music and so often – (see a post on one of those stellar songs here).  So essentially I am saying that you know this album wasn’t just thrown together, it grew out of crafting numerous tracks over time and it shows in the pretty darn solid collection of finger-picking, folk tinged beauties.  Definitely a recommended release.  Stream a few tracks below:

~

~

~

Find more on Andy at his Website, Facebook and Bandcamp and follow him on Twitter!
Purchase on Bandcamp (and get a real copy of the new CD here), iTunes, eMusic.

~Smansmith