Deliverance (MOONDRAGON, 2015, CD)
Steve Logan, a Welsh singer-songwriter long resident in
England, may have lost the accent but not the power to project. Deliverance is his follow-up to last
year’s Signs and Wonders. The debut release
was a pared-down, all-acoustic set, enriched by support from Kimberley Rew
(ex-Katrina and the Waves). On this new album he broadens the sonic palate,
adding a full rhythm section and switching between acoustic and electric guitar
with a dab of harmonica, much like his avowed hero Neil Young.
Logan once fronted a tribute band, Free Again, and you hear
Paul Rodgers in his vocal style. As a songwriter, his tastes are more Laurel
Canyon – clear from the outset on the attractive opening track, ‘Deliverance’. But
Logan’s his own man, a man audibly at ease with himself. Moments of tenderness,
often directed at his “wife and muse” (‘Just The Way Your Heart Beats’), bump
up against hard-rocking numbers (‘Didn’t Even Listen To Myself’). Active as a
poet for the page as well as a songsmith, he turns in a distinctive lyric,
whatever the medium.
Welcome as they are, one or two songs outstay their welcome, clocking in at over five minutes. But that’s nothing that can’t be fixed.
www.stevelogan.co.uk
