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| Circa
Artist: Bill Mallonee Label: Indie URL: www.volsounds.com (for ordering) www.billmallonee.net Time: 15 Tracks 69:31 |
Since last December, Bill Mallonee has offered fans who subscribe to his monthly mp3 site billtunes, five newly recorded songs each month. These songs are often bare and raw, recorded onto a DAT recorder at his kitchen table. His wife Muriah Rose adds piano and background vocals to several songs, as well as penning a couple of her own songs which were released on billtunes in recent months.
Out of these songs came the idea for Circa Mallonee’s first semi-official album release of 2007. The songs on this new project are a kind of ‘best of billtunes’ collection for those who haven’t been monthly subscribers.
The opening track “Leaving Trains” is inspired by the dark and lonely place that Mallonee has found himself in most recently, as he is without a label or manager. It’s an autobiographical song about how he has seen so much in his life fall away and disappear.
“Purgation” continues in that vein in a song about how when everything is gone and stripped away from a person, that God’s healing can take place.
“War Wound” is another dark song about poverty and loneliness:
Love can turn against you and leave you stranded in the wind,However, songs like “I Saw The Light” and “If I Should Fall From Grace With God” take on an overall optimistic and upbeat view of life, including the usual plentiful references to God’s Grace and Forgiveness.
And it’s bracing this whole endeaver,
Wish you had to two dimes to rub together,
You take leave of your senses just in time to stagger back to the house,
Hey, you got into a jam and connections well they started going south,
Your heart’s the purse sure enough,
You play your hand but you better learn to bluff.
“Nomenclature” and “3rd Shift Tower Gate” are very Dylanesque in their bare acoustic guitar format, coupled with Mallonee’s nasal-toned voice which he implements here.
“Here’s To Heartache” is a tune penned and sung by Muriah Rose, and it is a fine song at that! I look forward to hearing more of her writings in the future!
“All Joy To You Baby,” and “Hollowed Out My Heart” are two of the best love songs Bill Mallonee has written in quite a while. The latter contains one of the best verses he has composed in a while in my opinion:
All joy you baby,“Tobacco Sunburst” is another standout cut. In this song, Mallonee references, in his words, “JFK, VOL, and Mary Alice Mallonee.” Indeed this song is a tribute to all three of these, including Mallonee’s own mother, who passed away in 2006.
May your heart bath in bliss,
Yeah I swam inside your eyes my love,
And dried off in your kiss.
So to conclude this review, I suggest that if you haven’t been subscribing to billtunes lately, you pick this disc up via Mallonee’s mp3 store website: www.volsounds.com it is only $7.99 and well worth your money.
My only drawback is that I would have liked to have seen a slightly different song selection. “Get-Away” and “Sad Parade” are two songs from recent billtunes offerings that I feel deserved inclusion on this compilation, however, that is my only gripe about this otherwise solid stripped down effort!
James Morovich
7/12/07
