MUSIC REVIEW: BOBBY LONG - 'A WINTER TALE'

Musical Tradition + Popular Culture = A Win For Everyone

February 1, 2011

(ATO) Bobby Long is a student of things. He’s an observer and a documenter. He’s also something more than the average performer and singer-songwriter. Having graduated from London Met University, he wrote a senior thesis on the social impact of American folk music. He’s interested in more than just the cargo--he’s interested in the vehicle. Knowing his academic background, listeners can’t be surprised at the methods of craft that Long employs in piecing together A Winter Tale. It’s an irony that someone so obviously intrigued and rooted in Tradition is perhaps better known to countless teens as best friend to Robert Pattinson--a record-breaking pop culture phenomenon. A Winter Tale, by chance of association, may just lead those vampires from Twilight to something more substantial in emotional content.

Liam Watson, producer of The White Stripes' Elephant, affords the same luxurious simplicity with Long as he did with Jack and Meg. Each track sounds as if it was crafted at the source. There’s an uncut feeling about the ingots on display. There’s an earthy, masculine gravel as if the sensitivity has been mined and presented for listeners' stamp of approval. There’s also a slight sense of songs tumbling in arrival, as if we can pick and mix the running order ourselves. Songs sound like an exploration of craft as much as they do explorations of subject. Traditional folk instruments of acoustic guitar and mellowed bass take effect over brushed snares. Occasional percussive piano solidifies simple melodies; not heavily, not gently, the keys are struck. The effect is of a working man ironing his denim shirt. Some of the Bluesier, fingerpicked moments of acoustic minor scales represent real moments of understanding, both in tradition and in what’s required to make a song work.

“Bounty of Mary Jane” presents a passage of accomplished musicianship married with a Folk-based sentimentality and vocabulary of protest and reflection. “She’s all but a ship, a ship of ghosts and lost pride” is a misty-eyed line that breezes in and around the flute and the finger-picking. A female vocal line comes in with nothing but sadness.

Long plays some pretty neat tricks when he dresses social concerns in smaller, personal scale subject matter. “Two Years Old” measures personal experience against a sense of supernatural nationalism. Beaches become bloody, relationships are mistakenly understood as dead. Concepts intertwine and we’re not sure what’s real, what’s memory, and what’s imagined. There’s a kind of poetry in this.

It’s not all weighty expressions and stiff versions of the traditional. At times, like “Being a Mockingbird,” slide guitars dress a waltz with a lightness of touch that would have us believing that everything’s going to work out fine, even if we feel like we’ve lost it all. This is optimism but a mature version of keeping things together, not a sugary pop sensation.

As a collection, A Winter Tale ticks all the boxes it set out to fill. It’s more tapestry than it is Fine Art. It’s more personable than it is pop phenomenon. It sounds good at night, with headphones and no distractions. Bobby Long does good things which have an air of becoming more in further releases, perhaps from future barricades or bigger conflicts, when the human touch is sure to be needed.

For Fans Of: Ryan Adams, Mumford & Sons, Richard Thompson
Standout Tracks: “Dead And Done” “Two Years Old”