This debut album is an 18-song collection of original compositions that don’t set out to be innovative but are founded on the artist’s self-declared ”abiding love for the pop music made in the 1960s.”
Schijns (pronounced “Skines”) writes songs, sings, and plays electric and acoustic guitar. When not making music he has a day job as a consulting engineer and lives in Kelowna, BC, Canada.
The record bears the fruits of a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Andrew Smith recorded over the 2020-22 period, along with a couple of early songs recorded in Toronto with Glenn Domina. Session musicians were recruited as needed.
Schijns covers a range of styles including power-pop, folk, ragtime and even , with Trans-Pacific Beach Bum, surf rock. He doesn’t regard himself as a confessional singer-songwriter, preferring a neutral third person singular perspective.
As well as the album’s titular enquiry, there are more rhetorical questions in the opening track What? Why? . Despite asking “What is life? and Why go on?”, this song, like the majority on the record, remains upbeat and optimistic in tone.
|
While not denying that life can be full of trials and tribulations (see Hard Edged World or Say Goodbye To The Sad Man), the Canadian sets out to put a positive spin on such challenges. For example, Winters may come but Summers follow is part of the ‘seize the day’ message of Take Your Life And Run.
Another question - What Do I Know About Love? - is unusual in being a piano based number rather than placing a guitar-driven.
Any one track could be a single with the possible exception of the ambitious six minute closing tine, Elegy, in which a man looks back on the errors and could-have-beens of his long life.
With a playing time of 64 minutes, this good-hearted and enjoyable album is one that is best dipped into rather than consumed all at once.
Stephen Schijns’ website
|
