Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Brent Daniels - Every Road Has a Turn


Brent Daniels - Every Road Has a Turn 


The first album from Brent Daniels, Every Road Has a Turn, has a title reflective of his personal journey to this point. His early passion for music short-circuited for a few years while he pursued an alternative career as an electrician, but the desire to sing and perform couldn’t be repressed forever. Daniels sounds like a man finally released to chase down his dreams on a lot of these songs. He sings with such unrestrained enthusiasm, always managing to temper it with a generous dose of technique, that it isn’t difficult to imagine this is the experience of a lifetime so far for the talented young performer. His voice is the stuff careers are built from. It isn’t enough to just be able to hit the notes, you have to own the material and put something of yourself into it that no one else could and make the audience feel that experience. Brent Daniels does that on this album. 

“My First Friday Night” seems full of possibility based on title alone and the song’s lyric keeps listeners in a semi-state of suspense until it reveals its true subject early on. It’s musically stylish and hints of a classic country sound keep coming through via the structure and the song takes a number of very nice turns as it progresses. There’s no inklings of classic country peeking through the song “My Truck’s Bigger than Your Truck” and the shift in sound and approach is so massive that some of Daniels’ audience might feel the sting of whiplash. It isn’t a song that pretends to be high art – instead, it’s pure youthful exuberance and quintessentially American. There’s some humor tossed in for good measure reminding us to never take this tune very seriously. “Party at the End of the Road” shares a similar spirit, obviously, but it doesn’t lay on the rock elements quite as heavily as what we heard on the last song. Despite the typical first class musical accompaniment, this plays up the same carefree attitude heard in “My Truck’s Bigger than Your Truck” with an even stronger chorus. “Love You Down” has some low-key rock energy that Daniels and his band mates cut loose with at crucial points during the recording.  

“Everything About You” is one of the album’s finest musical moments thanks to the great playing during the chorus and how they escalate it perfectly into another memorable refrain. The pop sensibility on this album never compromises its country spirit however; Daniels has some less than obvious influences and they certainly aren’t exclusive pulled from the rock and pop world. The delicate acoustic structure of “Hold On” doesn’t mean that Daniels and his fellow musicians aren’t allowed to marshal the same energies, they just get turned to a much different effect here. His singing really goes deeply into the track and it’s easy to hear his engagement with every word. Brent Daniels wraps up Every Road Has a Turn with another riff on classic country songwriting with the song “I’ve Been Gone” and it reaffirms his best points as a performing artist. He shows the same consistent talent for getting inside a song and filling it with his own personality and slight smirks snaking through on certain lines attests to his emotive skills for a final time. Anyone who hears this album and starts following Brent Daniels is smart and lucky. You’re coming in on the ground floor of something special.  

9 out of 10 stars

 

William Elgin

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