Hallmarks of a good storyteller: look beyond the obvious for inspiration, find grandeur and profundity in the simple. Singer-songwriter Barak Hill, to his credit, accomplishes both on his first full-length album, This Life I Love. Hill is far from a newcomer, though–he has been releasing recorded material since 2004–and his songwriting style reflects both experience and a deft touch. Where Hill excels, and so few of his contemporaries do, is in making silence and pause into storytelling devices unto themselves. Similar to his friend and fellow songwriter, Dallas Jones (who appears on This Life I Love as a backing musician), Hill’s lyrical approach is economical and plain-spoken, the words of everyman. But they’re delivered with the careful pacing and assuredness of a man who knows the impact he wants and how to get it. It’s this sense of when not to sing or even play that lends the songs a gravitas they could lose in the hands of someone else. You’ll find this on best display in tracks such as “A Garden, a Dog, and a Son,” “Been Dying To Tell You,” the album-opening “My Way Home” and the excellent title track, which spirals its way up its chorus to its uplifting, climactic declaration.
For the other part of the above equation–the not-obvious stories–Hill looks to one of the most overlooked members of the circus with a gruesome, but dramatically attention-getting, endgame (“The Lion Tamer’s Plan”); The Wizard of Oz (“Building the Tin Man”); a peon’s escapist daydream (“Kerosene (An Arsonist’s Lament)”); and a Civil War soldier coming home to his love (“Hannah, See You Soon”), the last aided (because, let’s face it, the returning-soldier thing has been done before) by the actual letters a soldier from the period wrote to the woman waiting for him. All are stories well told and worthy chapters in this album, an early bid to be remembered among the year’s local best.
Give the album a listen for yourself here.
