Zachary Cale

When a rare recommendation arrived from a respected source (eminent musician Hans Chew) I sat up straight. The recommendation was Zachary Cale from Enon, Louisiana and he was playing in nearby York within days. Hearing his album 'Noise Of Welcome' made me instantly change plans to see another band the same night in Sheffield. I was taken by the fragile voice, the confident arrangements and the intriguing juxtaposition of disparate words in his lyrics.

To stand out in the overcrowded singer songwriter genre these days an artist has to find an angle or, more impressively (Josh T Pearson, John Murry), deliver their music from such a position of brutal conviction that the listener identifies and engages with the person before finding a way in to the music itself. So this was a feeling I had. My sixth sense (located in the gut) positively screamed at me.

True enough, the album continued to revealed its layers over the next couple of days and we found our way to the Fulford Arms in York where he was playing solo on a mid-week night.

He is a very disarming individual and we managed a quick chat during which he revealed his love of British/ Irish music (Waterboys, The Fall, The Kinks ) before delivering a set of songs (including Mourning Glory Kid, above) that invited those watching into his interior world. His guitar playing is deceptively complex, featuring runs and chord sequences that turned the instrument into an orchestra. I was reminded mostly of English folk legend Michael Chapman, who I saw in February.

http://swiftysteve.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/michael-chapman.html

Live, his voice comes and goes, dropping and then rising on lyrics themed around the trials of being human. I sensed that, deeper than this, he is pre-occupied by forgiveness and, who knows, loss. Cale's version of lyrical folk balladry intertwines the urban and the pastoral - his songs are rooted in real life - this is no daydreamer's charter or means of escape. He contemplates to find answers, only for those answers to slip away in the cold light of day. But this is OK -  he has his music to re-discover those solutions and to begin to make those choices.

Zachary Cale is different. He has the searing honesty which will see him through and the work ethic to make it happen.

http://allhandselectric.com/zacharycale.html