There is a real skill to being able to make music that simultaneously sounds like you have been listening to all of your life but also the newest, freshest music to waft through the airwaves but it is a skill that Ed Hale appears to possess in no small amount. I guess it is what happens when you combine a wonderful musical imagination with a template that has served songwriters so well for the past 50 years. But just because someone takes the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix out approach” that doesn’t mean that they can’t give it a fresh lick of paint, re-shape, refine, have fun with and add new and exciting sonic detail to it. And that again is something that Ed Hale revels in. So For Real is definitely a case of evolution rather than revolution.
Summer Flowers kicks things off majestically, a veritable heatwave of retro-pop vibes, a flex of rock muscle and some wonderfully psychedelic moves and it is these corner stones that define the albums personality. But this isn’t plunder, plagiarism or pastiche, for all its backward glance to past glories, songs such as Gimme Some Rock ’n’ Roll chime in tune with bands such as Flaming Lips or Wasuremono as readily as it does anything from previous generations.
Stephanie’s Song (It’s Alright, It’s Okay) wanders some strange country backroads, one’s most deffinatly leading away from Nashvegas and possibly leading north towards Mercury Rev’s secret hideaway, Honestly is bold and unabashed folk-rock and Martha’s Sleeping blends cinematic pop with a sort of wide-screen cosmic folk music.
So For Real proves that there is life in the singer-songwriter format yet and as always, forgive another cliche, “it ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it.” Forget your earnest, would be troubadour with complicated hair and skinny jeans, Ed Hale is everything that image isn’t. This is a solo player thinking like a band, a master craftsman who isn’t afraid to have fun, a student of the musical past who knows how to carry its most important musical hallmarks into the future. It is music that is instantly familiar yet wonderfully fresh. How does he even juggle so many brilliant contradictions? But then if we knew the answer to that….
In a world where people seem to feel entitled to all of the answers, where ironically the demand for knowledge has left us with a society who are less informed but more confident in their ignorance, it is nice to know that there are people who still revel in the mysteries of life. I don’t need to know how electricity works to enjoy a cup of tea and I don’t need to subscribe to a religion to know right from wrong, why not just follow your own path and try not to piss too many people off. Which is pretty much what Buddha said, I think.
There is a saying; “Class is permanent, form is temporary” well that applies here, ‘Miles To Go’ is an album that takes songs from the vaults of blues music and sets about restoring them for the modern audience. It’s a strange concept for an album but one that succeeds in all aspects of what it is trying to achieve. Calling it a restoration project is very close to what it is and it never feels cheap or a quick fix to sell albums, it’s lovingly done and it’s clear there are two agenda’s; firstly to reintroduce us to songs that were written decades ago (one is from 1927!) possibly by people the musical world have begun to forget and, secondly, to remind us how strong, and relevant, these songs sound when handled correctly.
Well, that’s a side of 
Man, that riff! You can’t beat a low-slung, scattergun blast of straight and honest garage rock of the sort that might have lured you into a club on the Lower East Side sometime around ’78. It growls, it grooves and it echos with the ghosts of the greats of blues, rock’n’roll and punk. The advantage that 
This time out 
Elton John once sang “sad songs say so much” and it’s probably safe to say that we all have a sad song in our list of all-time favourite songs, those are the songs we are often drawn to, we can sympathise, empathise and relate to these moments of emotional outpouring. We find comfort knowing some rich, famous singer in LA shares the exact same emotions that we do.
Honesty is the best policy so I’m gonna come right out and address the elephant in the room that is the stumbling block of Noise Therapy’s sound right away. There is a major discrepancy in terms of delivery and production between the quality of the vocals and the instruments playing behind it. Okay, this is metal, it comes with a certain brutality, rawness and passion but when it comes to the vocal execution you can’t help
Borrowed Time is the sound of past musical traditions, modern sonic inventiveness and future music potentials all mixing liberally in what can only be described as a fresh move for pop. For pop this definitely is, but it is pop with a soulful heritage, Valentine’s vocals alone leave that sonic finger-print on the track. But as deft and addictive as the vocals are, this is pop music built also from some gorgeous textures. Rather than the perfunctory, identikit sound of most of today’s chart bound competition, real thought has gone into the wonderfully layered musical threads that form the song’s body.
