Nick Black - Deep Blue
There’s an amazing mix of power and beauty on Nick
Black’s second album Deep Blue. He uses a lot of different instruments to
achieve that effect, but the key elements on this release on his voice, guitar,
horns, and keyboard color. His voice is placed up front in the mix, but the
aforementioned contributions certainly play a crucial role in getting the song
over for his target listeners. The guitar work never becomes too omnipresent –
Black knows that overplaying in this soul and R&B style he co-opts will ultimately
drag the music down and ends up in a creative dead end. There’s a sense of
endless possibility surrounding Black’s music on this album and a feeling that
he’s going for broke in attempt to take his work to another, higher level than
before.
His instincts for making Deep Blue work are obvious
from the start. Songs like “Grownups” and “Ocean” show, in some ways, the two
primary competing elements in the album’s songwriting character. Black
alternates between straight ahead tributes to the longstanding traditions of
R&B, blues, and soul music while still aiming to upend those traditions
with a risky approach to time signatures, tempo changes, and dynamics. The
ultimate result is that Black has managed the impressive task of recording a
much more substantive work in multiple genres without ever finding himself
beholden to following one or two particular sounds each time out. While
“Falling in Life” might be a funk soul potpourri of tempo shifts and deep
grooves, “D.I.Y.” has less physical intentions and instead looks to invoke mood
and introspection throwing slowing things down, stripping things back. There
are only a handful of moments on Deep Blue that you might deem outright blues
and this song is one of them. “Only One Man” is much closer to mainstream AOR
rock in the sense that it makes much more pronounced use of dynamics and
constructions the song from the ground up with different, interlocking sections
tied together by often dramatic transitions.
“The Worst You Can Do” is cut from similar cloth
and arguably enjoys much more success. The choice of opening with Black and
acoustic guitar makes quite a difference in setting mood compared to earlier
and later tracks on Deep Blue and the theme continues throughout the enter
song. “Reason to Stay”, instead, represents the second of Deep Blue’s all out
bluesy tracks. This isn’t far removed from the classic four piece format
popularized by people like Howlin’ Wolf’s band or later blues rock bands, but
Black’s touch never gets that heavy musically and instead merely echoes it.
“Don’t Leave Louise” is the second and, arguably again, most commercial of the
album’s two ballads. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. This is certainly the
most imaginative and engaging of the two songs and, ironically, less studied.
The naturalness that comes across will draw a lot of attention. It’s attention
well deserved for a performer and album that’s sure to reassure and surprise
many. To risk cliché, Nick Black is the real deal.
9 out of 10 stars
Dale Butcher
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