REVIEW : Nuclear Daydream - Sunday Paper

by Rob O'Connor

Note : 3,5 stars

Joseph Arthur belongs in an elite club of top-drawer singer-songwriters who release consistently good albums to an audience that may or may not exist. The Akron, Ohio native was discovered by Peter Gabriel and signed to his Real World imprint, where he was promptly critically lauded and commercially ignored—the common fate of singer-songwriters who aren't likely to inspire their own line of calendars. 

Yet Arthur's songs are lyrically intelligent and poignant, his singing emotive yet restrained. He orchestrates the proceedings with a tilt toward Love's "Forever Changes" and other 1960s productions, but with a firm head in the here and now, as the bass kicks forth with modern presence. The echoed shimmers of "Automatic Situation" are lush and seductive, as if the band had been dipped into a Parisian nightclub for effect. It's in these moments, when he relies on his mastery of the past without sounding too retro, that Arthur's at his strongest. 

Arthur can emote quietly with the ghosts of T. Rex and Elliot Smith humming in his ear ("Electrical Storm"), whether singing songs about junkies ("Too Much to Hide," "Slide Away," the title track) or finding inner peace down the road ("Enough to Get Away"). He can repeat a phrase ("I'm no longer who I was, no longer who I thought I was") until its beauty is fully unpeeled. And he does so in voices that vary from emphatic whispers to a petulant, Johnny Thunders-like rasp that twists Arthur into a bit of an unexpected rock 'n' roll animal.