Doug Burr is quickly and rightly rising in prominence in the Dallas music scene. He has been nominated for and won several songwriting honors and opened for Bill Mallonee, The Great lake Swimmers among others. While his first album was an independently released gospel record called The Sickle and the Sheaves. His newest album, On Promenade, is co-released by Velvet Blue Records, home of Starflyer 59, Joy Electric, Fine China and others, along with Spune, promoters of the Dallas Wall of Sound music festival.

Doug Burr plays music that feels like it’s been part of your life all along. It’s music that’s at once challenging and comforting, “subtle yet commanding”. Burr performs music that broadly falls in the “alt. country” and modern folk genres, drawing from many of your favorites, Wilco, Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, Neil Young, Will Oldham and others. But Burr weaves all of these influences into a sound all his own, both familiar and new.

The album draws heavily on country, rock and pop influences filtered through Daniel Lanois‘ shimmering production approach and the fog of the blues. Burr weaves together strong hooks and melodies in in both the electric and acoustic arenas. Lyrically, the album is less straight-forward about issues of faith as its predecessor The Sickle and the Sheaves, Burr’s Gospel project, but faith remains at the center of these songs as the foundation that remains unshaken through the sometimes rough times of life. Though Burr deals with issues of love and loss, he upholds it all with the light of redemption always shining through the cracks.

Burr skillfully balances the melancholy of country twang with the hope of redemption. The album opens with “Slow Southern Home,” which for many, will be the defining song of the album, setting the mood from the start with the opening lines: “I lay awake for a night, drenched in anguish and bright light.” The album intersperses quieter but no less moving numbers such as “Come to My Senses” featuring the rapture imagery: ” There’s werewolves standing on Jordan’s shores” and “Whippoorwill,” with its optimistic eye towards Spring, which use sparse instrumentation to full effect. But it’s the more fleshed out numbers that carry the bulk of the weight. “Graniteville” tells the tale of a town caught sleeping while a train filled with poison crashes in its midst. Using guitars and fiddle to mimic the screeching train, the song lumbers to the crescendo of a lover’s plea that his love be remembered in the face of an uncertain future.

The album centers around a pair of tunes dealing with the Van Gogh brothers, “How Can the Lark (My Dear Theo)” and “Should’ve Known.” The first excerpts correspondence between Vincent Van Gogh and his brother Theo about Vincent’s love for young woman, which ended in the desperate act of chopping off his ear and sending it to her. “Should’ve Known,” centers on Theo Van Gogh, the great-grandson of the original Theo, who was murdered in broad daylight for his film about Muslim abuses of women. These two songs, with their mixture of hope and disappointment, their shimmering electric guitars, and swelling melodies, form the center of a beautiful and moving album.

While the album is most easily categorized as “alt. country,” there is enough variety and song-craft to appeal to a wider audience than the tag might suggest. Burr has succeeded where so many fail: harnessing and balancing hurt and hope, love and loss while making you feel as if it’s all just a letter from a longtime friend, one you hope to hear from again soon.

Highly recommended.

• Visit Doug Burr’s official website
• Purchase On Promenade from Velvet Blue

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed