Steve Logan

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