Son Of The Velvet Rat - Playground (2006)

Tracklist

01. Flower Song
02. Ready to Go
03. Sleeping Stars
04. Are the Angels Pretty?
05. The Sea so Blue
06. Everything's Calm
07. How Can I Make Her Smile Again?
08. Snow
09. Lungfish
10. She Floated Away
11. Blue Hair
12. I Am a Jet Pilot
13. Wait
14. When She Walks in the Room

Austrian singer/songwriter Georg Altziebler is the focal point of this 2006 album just as he was on Son of the Velvet Rat's 2003 debut, By My Side. His craggy, quavering delivery style makes this another exercise in Sunday morning, early winter listening; Gordon Lightfoot is one reference point, but Altziebler actually sounds like someone far more obscure, Minnesotan folkie Kreg Viesselman. The arrangements retain the sparsity of Leonard Cohen's compositions, with the band's musicianship tasteful but unimaginative in its backseat role. Altziebler's songcraft is gentle and comforting on such key tracks as Ready to Go, Everything's Calm (But My Heart), and the instrumental Snow, and there's a palpable warmth in the live cuts Are the Angels Pretty? and The Sea So Blue. But his accent can be a distraction (through the door becomes troo de doher on a closing cover of Bryan Ferry's When She Walks in the Room) and sometimes the mood slips into sleepwalking resignation (as on the limp and overlong Blue Hair). Still, Playground is soothing in its restraint and there's barely a weak track in this improvement on By My Side's template.

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