OFFICIAL: http://greggstewartmusic.com/
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/gstewartmusic
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/thatgreggstewart
Written
by Mike Yoder, posted by blog admin
Gregg
Stewart stays busy. The New Jersey based singer/songwriter, creative force
behind the band Stewboss, follows up his first solo album released in March of
this year with one of the most unique cover album projects you are ever likely
to hear. Twenty Sixteen gathers fourteen songs popularized or written by
musical artists who died in 2016 and ranges across a relatively wide array of
musical styles and approaches. It’s more than a tribute however. One of the
most notable strengths we hear on Twenty Sixteen is Stewart’s restless
creativity that’s seldom content with merely duplicating the original versions
of these songs. Instead, Stewart makes a noticeable effort to retain the spirit
inhabiting those tracks while transforming them in unexpected ways that,
nonetheless, remain faithful to their guiding spirit. This is no small feat.
The path of least resistance says that merely aping the more famous originals
and hitting one’s marks would be enough to make this a worthwhile excursion
from his own songwriting, but it’s to Stewart’s credit that he doesn’t settle
for that.
Dead
Or Alive and their front man Pete Burns entered history with the relentlessly
sing-able “You Spin Me Round” and, while Stewart can’t whip up the same
physicality with his more low key arrangement, he does manage to capture much
of the original’s suggestiveness and playful mood. He turns to another Eighties’
icon George Michael with a cover of his song “A Different Corner” and, stripped
of Michael’s pop affectations, Stewart gives us a chance to rediscover this
track as a fundamentally fine song His
take on Prince’s pop classic “Raspberry Beret” isn’t the first successful
re-invention of the song, but it’s likely the most original. Stewart retains
the central melody and builds around it, but the performance is shorn of the
bells and whistles livening up Prince’s original and successful nonetheless
because of Stewart’s emotive vocal and the low-key vibe his acoustic instrumentation
takes advantage of. He takes a, perhaps, unexpected turn covering Viola Beach’s
“Daisies” and the performance illustrates another of Twenty Sixteen’s strengths
– it has the potential to introduce bands/songs to listeners that they might
have otherwise missed. His take on the indie pop band’s “Daisies” reveals the
nuanced depths of their young, tragically lost talent and Stewart obviously
relates to the song and their experience as he digs in with an absolutely super
vocal.
Leon
Russell’s “One More Love Song” gets a compelling workout and restructuring that
shows Stewart’s imaginative brilliance. It seems like a natural to revamp the
tune so that it sounds more like a number from The Band and Stewart makes this
decision pay handsome dividends. His cover of the early Jefferson Airplane
track “High Flying Bird” filters the original’s nascent San Francisco trappings
through Stewart’s modern sensibility and it results in a version of this
Airplane tune that the band’s recently deceased leader, Paul Kantner, would
undoubtedly enjoy. The album takes a slightly more personal turn with his
performance of “That’s How You Know”, a song penned by Los Angeles songwriting
mainstay Andrew Dorff. The close proximity of Stewart to the departed gives the
outing a different sense of immediacy and urgency lacking in other numbers and
Stewart definitely approaches it with an cathartic air. Twenty Sixteen says as
much about Greeg Stewart as it does the songwriters he’s chosen from and it
makes for a substantive offering while we wait a little longer for Stewart’s
next burst of songwriting from his own pen.
No comments:
Post a Comment