John Fullbright - Songs - Music & Performance - CD

SONGS is John Fullbright's follow-up to his GRAMMY-nominated debut, FROM THE GROUND UP. SONGS has it's moments of darkness, tracks born from pain and heartbreak, but for a craftsman like Fullbright, there are few greater joys than carving emotion into music, taking a stab at that lofty goal of immortality through song. It makes him and his fans 'happy,' and there's nothing bad about that.

John Fullbright is a songwriter. Yeah, a lot of folks write songs, and some of those songs are pretty good, and some of them are big hits, and then some of them go nowhere at all commercially, but are still good songs, maybe just waiting for the right person to sing them. But not everyone is a songwriter, even if they write good songs now and then, at least not the way Fullbright is a songwriter. He's in the Townes Van Zandt, Merle Haggard, Randy Newman, Jimmy Webb mold when it comes to songwriting. It's what he does, and while he's a fine singer, guitarist, pianist, and, as it turns out, whistler, it's his songs that shine through with clarity, care, and thoughtfulness, each one a fully realized little gem, and it's no coincidence that his second studio album is simply called Songs. They're the stars here. Recorded with a sparse, open warmth, the album opens with a Neil Young-like "Out on the Weekend" shuffle called "Happy" (which even includes some pretty good plain old whistling from Fullbright) and gracefully builds from there, an intimate, sometimes confessional batch of songs that muse on life, love, and happiness with an easy familiarity, yet with an unexpected turn of phrase here or there that lifts them into something singular and special. "She Knows" is a brilliant love song, for instance, and when Fullbright sings the hook, "She knows a thing or two about me," his verses have already proven that, and the song is revealed as a song about what Fullbright has learned about himself from her. Similarly, "Until You Were Gone" builds like a familiar I-didn't-know-what-I-had-until-it-was-gone song, but in Fullbright's hands, the realization feels actually lived in, absorbed, and learned. Fullbright has been labeled a whole lot of things already, from country to Americana, but what shines through most in this quiet, unassuming, but wonderfully precise and intimately comforting set is that, while his songs may individually fall into any of these genres, he is first and foremost a songwriter. Thankfully, that is what he does, and he does it as well as anyone in recent memory. ~ Steve Leggett, Rovi

Performer	John Fullbright
Music genre	Rock
Music subgenre	CD - ROCK
Music release type	Release
Media format	CD
Original release date	2014
Edition	Standard
Language	English
Has parental advisory label	N
Number of discs	1
Series title	John Fullbright - Songs [CD]
Awards won	GRAMMY-nominated
Track listing	Happy, When You're Here, Keeping Hope Alive, She Knows, Until You Were Gone, Write a Song, Never Cry Again, Going Home, All That You Know, One That Lives Too Far, High Road, Very First Time
Record label	Blue Dirt Records
Songwriter	John Fullbright
Track name	Happy, She Knows, Until You Were Gone, When You're Here, Never Cry Again, Very First Time
Music media format	CD
Is edited	N
Is enhanced	N