I sometimes wonder when publicists say that an artist “echoes the great American singer-songwriters of the early 1970s, where solid songwriting was mainstream” just what that means.
It was a long time ago and memories are short. But you can do far worse than to listen to this sample track, ‘Southern Wind’, the opener from Chase Rivers’ (Troels Mynster) debut album ‘Head in the Clouds’ to get far more than just a feel for that era and the quality of the songwriting, performance and production.
His voice is so smooth, the diction so clear and the simple melody finger plucked so precisely that it immediately sets a bar that, I’m sorry to say, some artists can only aspire to. Then there’s some impressive syncopation between guitars, keys and percussion.
His subject matter on the album is “being human in an accelerating culture” which doesn’t refer, I’m certain, to growing people in a Petri dish but to how humanity is struggling to keep up with rampant technology, which can lead easily to losing your connection with people and nature, rather than with the internet.
The inspiration for it was a year long road trip around Europe with his family, in a caravan, which became their home, school, and workplace. The long journey gave the family the opportunity to pause and observe society and modern life from a distance, inspiring him to write new songs along the way.
And that observation was not a positive one, envisaging a relentless growth- and individual-based society, where many feel disconnected. The lyrics on ‘Southern Wind’ are apposite, as he tries to avoid those negative winds by keeping his head in the clouds.
When they returned home to Denmark in 2023, he brought with him a collection of new songs that were too good to remain unpublished. He contacted producer Jens Benz who helped him do just that.
The only thing I don’t quite get is how this song doesn’t sound European. It is as if the road trip was around the US, with a lengthy stretch along the old Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles, with various stop offs at motels, diners, hoedowns, barbecues, drag races, parades or whatever.
Stylistically it might have been lifted straight out of the 70s for sure and put into my mind something between Lobo’s ‘Me, you and a dog named Boo’ and Noel Harrison’s version of Michael Legrand’s ‘The Windmill’s of your mind.’
Not that it actually sounds like either of those songs; it’s just that it’s as if it were date-stamped with the quality of that era.
Find him on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550534867403
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chase_rivers_music/
Photo credit: Rasmus Skovgaard Hansen
