Graded on a Curve: John Leventhal, Rumble Strip

The pop music world can generally be a din of noise and homogenized pop, with artists from the important thing developments having careers that always don’t final so long as a serious league baseball season. A musical artist who has had an extended, acclaimed profession, however solely now could be releasing a solo album is John Leventhal.

He has labored primarily as a file producer but additionally as an engineer, a songwriter, and an instrumentalist for many years, engaged on numerous albums which can be critically acclaimed, but additionally recordings that win prestigious awards and promote properly. He might be most identified for his work with Marc Cohn and Roseanne Cash, (to whom Leventhal is married), and for producing Shawn Colvin’s album Steady On which received the Grammy for album of the yr in 1988.

His solo debut displays the place the place he has lived and in addition produced most of the albums he helmed; New York. But relatively than, a brash, in-your-face sound, he has made a largely guitar instrumental album that may very well be known as city acoustic. This is the sound of the town at night time, when the streets usually are not crammed with folks and exercise. One can virtually fill within the lacking sounds of random automotive horns, the rumble of vans, and even the echo of the bark of a stray canine.

There are some tracks with vocals, together with two by Cash on “That’s All I Know About Arkansas,” a tune Leventhal wrote with Cash and “If You Only Knew” and one by Leventhal himself, “The Only Ghost,” which he co-wrote with Marc Cohn, that was to be part of Dr. John’s last album. There are additionally some extra pronounced nation flavorings on “Meteor.”

The album is a breath of recent air amidst the stagnant sounds of as we speak’s music scene and a timeless recording that may stick round for a very long time. Let’s hope now that Leventhal has lastly recorded an album of is personal, there are lots of extra to observe.

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