Jake Sheppard – In Love With a Ghost
Psychologists assure us that no men or women are ever truly themselves. Certainly, they’re playing someone else when they’re in company. And, most definitely, these rules applies mostly to people who are tremendously successful at what it is that they do.
The only people who can afford to be themselves are those who aren’t too bothered by failure and, because of that, find it wherever they go. Everyone else has just learned to read the room and has worked out what it is that brings out those qualities in themselves to which all others respond. Since pop music is, essentially, a charm game, why shouldn’t this work when writing music?
Instead of a perfect smile or a really impressive-looking suit, Jake Sheppard is a man who steps inside of a mood whenever fixing up to sing. “In Love With a Ghost” delivers the sweetest notes of melancholy, the kind of tones that you can only produce, or feel for that matter, when you allow a bit of those ancient regrets to sip into your brain. Sheppard’s singing is gorgeous and so are the feelings that he can so easily access.
Daisy Duke – What’s Your Name
You are constantly told by the world to get on with things, not to be late, and to handle the difficult tasks first. That’s all well and good. We should all listen to productivity coaches to some degree. But, there’s a risk that if you listen too closely, if you start the serious work too early, that you’ll have absolutely no time to spend on thinking about yourself.
And, frankly, you’ve no other job that’s more important in this world than to think about yourself, to analyse what it is that brought you to the place you are, to see old patterns and, perhaps, to try and break them. Daisy Duke is of the mind that each false step is what brought you here and deserves having a light fixed on it from time to time.
“What’s Your Name” is an Americana-styled chant into the ether about acceptance and redemption. It’s a Tom Waits-like anthem dedicated to lost innocence, and one that honours the cost that’s had to be paid. Daisy Duke’s performance, as well as the production and arrangement here, are striking.
