Self-published and beautifully produced in every way, 'Late Last Night' is one of those albums that will just grow in stature as time goes by. Eleven songs of quiet beauty that are not going to knock your socks off at first pass - no obvious toe-tappers here - but demonstate an impressive self confidence.
Robby's done things his own way and found his own voice as a writer and as a performer so that the likes of me can't take the usual short-circuit and say, 'oh, he sounds like so and so'. His songs are mostly about love and the loss of love - like many writers he's more likely to write about the girl who left than the one who stayed - and alll demonstrate the polish of having been worked at and worked at till each is a distinctive gem.
I reckon it's a good sign for an album when, on each new listening, your favourite song changes; at the moment, mine is 'two tickets' which brilliantly connects the adult man who has just been walked out on with the boy stood up on a date at the fairground. The adult might seem to cope better with the rejection but internally the pain still feels the same.
There is one song about war from the perspective of a G.I.Joe, liable to believe the propaganda of a just war and then unable to believe how he ends up as a licensed killer, sent hither and thither as the army demands and divorced for ever from the life he knew back home; there is also a cover of AJ Roach's 'My Chemicals' (which comes from one of the finest albums of the last five years, 'Revelation'). Robby takes it slower than AJ but he's completely sure of what he's doing and this amounts to a reinterpretation.
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The closing song, which I shall call 'Ferris Wheel', doesn't appear on the track listing or lyric sheet, so I presume it's Robby's own song but it really is a bonus song in the sense of having the most insidiously beautiful, gentle hook. He does hooks but they're all pretty understated; this one, though, will haunt you.
Full credit is given in the 'thank you' column to Lex Price in the producer's chair and on all things guitar and guitar-like. It's a beautiful job: strings, accordion, organ and other assorted keyboards, backing vocalists and all appear in a watercolour wash that enhance without dominating, even leaving space for those momentary silences that can be so effective in a song and most definitely are here - especially in 'my love was gold, a poignant song remembering when being in love put him on top of the world. This is a Nashville album without a hint of country about it, proof that Nashville's much more than CMA town.
(John (Biscuits & Gravy) Davy www.nessmp3.com/music/bicuitsandgravy)
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