Here's a new Texan voice on the Americana scene; not distinctively Texan, I would say, but one of those guys who will happily jump from an acoustic number with folk fiddle embellishment to full-on rock with power chords and a bit of the old screeching feedback.There's a lot of good music here, but... for me, there's no real meat in here, and somehow the whole thing doesn't quite hang together.
Reason No. 1: the production feels like a kitchen sink job. There's no consistency of sound, of the feeling that there's a band playing together. When in doubt, another instrument has been lumped into the mix - bolted on rather than melded in.
Reason No. 2: lyrically, the songs are pretty inconsequential: not really engaging in any way, and sometimes crippled by really clunky lines. Probably the most interesting lyric is "Atlanta's Fall", about the lingering emotional damage of the civil war. However the central event is the hanging of a union soldier accused of rape - an event that occured no time recently and could easily be taken from a tv mini-series; and the lines "They said he kissed a lady/And promised her to wed/They said he stole her virtue/Though she accepted him to bed" clunk along pretty badly for my money.
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Overall I get the feeling he needs to get under the skin of things more - of his life, of the lives of those he encounters - before I could engage with his songs really. A shame really, because there's lots of nice playing here and when Tim Scott really finds his songwriter's voice, these guys will help him deliver.
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