The Great Park – Spring
Woodland Recordings 2009
Listen while reading:
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Ok, today I don’t have much time for writing and so I will make this as short as possible. Yesterday I informed you of Woodland Recordings and told you something about their first release. It was a double EP release featuring both The Diamond Family Archive and The Great Park. For today I will review Stephen Burch’s release called Spring.
Spring is a collection of 15 tracks (many of them released before but not as acoustic versions) he recorded in one afternoon in April 2009 in Berlin. Therefore it’s solo acoustic and this is what we like, isn’t it? It’s worth to be mentioned that Spring is the first of two records which were released this year under the moniker The Great Park. The newer one is called The Wife and I’m sure you will read something about it here soon.
On the right: Stephen Burch aka The Great Park
The lack of other instruments is what I really like about this record. But this is nothing new if you know me just a little bit because I just love the so produced closeness to the artist and its music. Besides this Stephen Burch is blessed with a unique and very colourful voice, his singing is more like a story-telling and talking to the listener. Nevertheless the melodies he sings are well integrated and underline the chords and melodies of his guitar in a great way. The tracks themselfs are mostly staid and deal with sad topics and all kinds of personal relationships. They transport a great amount of emotions but I would not call them dark or depressive.
My good friend Smansmith from slowcoustic.com posted once that there is something special about demo versions and that it can be very fulfilling to hear a track in his raw instead of his finished version. I have to agree on this because I think this once more adds intimacy to the songs. And this is also the reason I like Spring so much because the fact, that it was recorded in one afternoon creates a feeling of great familiarity and I really can imagine that afternoon, maybe sitting in the same room as Stephen, and watching him play his songs. Isn’t this great when you listen to a record and you get a feeling of being so close to the music itself? For me it is.
If you like what you hear, order your copy at Woodland Recordings and additionally visit The Great Park’s MySpace site or his personal homepage.
Thank you for the review – Spring is now available again from http://www.thegreatpark.co.uk and http://www.woodlandrecordings.com.
thanks for the information. i edited the post referring to this.
[...] wrote on Stephen Burch aka The Great Park earlier and I liked his music very much. And I still think he plays great acoustic folk you should check [...]
[...] it features lots of instruments besides acoustic guitar and vocals and if you gave a listen to Spring, you’ll notice that this album is more colorful than Spring but as intimate as it could be. [...]