It's old news: A sensitive guy with a guitar, some songs about childhood memories and the difficulty of modern relationships, existential angst in two- or three-part harmony. Same old, same old.
But not quite. On repeated listens, Marc Barnhill's BLUE TIME yields unexpected pleasures. It's a homemade affair, to be sure, but that's part of its appeal. There's a murkiness here that's appropriate to the occasion, which is one of cautious reassessment of past, present and future. A glance through the equally careful lyrics reveals how ambitious the project is: the over-examined life re-examined, recast and retold. If the album is overly studied in its lyrical and thematic precision, it's entirely successful in convincing you of its own importance. In the hands of a lesser songwriter, this material would seem self-serving and indulgent. Barnhill uses autobiography to paint our collective unconscious.
The standout track is "Wayfarer of the Brine," a gorgeously somber juxtaposition of childhood innocence and psychic pain, which is always on the edge of foundering into pathos but being kept afloat by well chosen words. (They're that good.) Other highlights include "Brother of Mine," "Already on My Way," and "Smoke and Rattles," which sounds like the CD's intended hit single. ("Turning Your Back on Today" vies for that position, but lacks the unity and focus that render "Smoke" anthemic.)
The lyrical thread weaves through a preponderance of memorable phrases: "serenading a sand illusion," "uncloaked our celtic-cross menagerie," "making heaven out of houses and highways," "burning in the station like a burial stone,""choking in the shadow of the family tree." The overall effect is one of serious, almost literary attention to emotional detail, of poetry without pretension.
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That's not to downplay the album's melodic achievement. Everything here is pleasant and catchy, with the kinds of tunes that surely were waiting around for someone to dust them off and make use of them, like "Summer Fell" (a credible Americana ballad reinterpreted with piano) and "Shawl" (which teasingly threatens to grunge out before collapsing into the most minimalist of pop songs). Barnhill's vocal delivery is direct and unassuming, presenting the words and melodies without dominating them, and the production (mainly involving guitars and synthesizers) adds tasteful flourishes to the songs' strikingly bare bones. The musical elements do tend to take a backseat in moments of lyrical excess ("Exactly What I Would Say," "Tragedy in Coney Island"), but songwriting this good deserves a little room to exercise.
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