Joshua Hyslop
Echoes

Long carpets of dead leaves along tree-lined paths with bare branches. A gentle breeze on the body and, above the head, a warm sun devoid of the typical summer brightness. In a single word: Autumn.

The autumn that during walks - should you like music - invites you to put on your headphones and find something suitable to best represent your place in the world.

Let's be honest, nowadays the good records come mostly from the underground, and it's precisely the underground, the musical planet inhabited by Joshua Hyslop.

A young and little-known Canadian songwriter, but with a good reputation - for those who know him, of course. Two records behind him and a third (Echos, indeed) that stands as a desolate manifesto of melancholy and serene solitude, a modest yet valuable musical fresco that whispers in my ears, as whispered is Joshua's voice, in recounting his inner torments.

However, it is not a suffering record, but a relaxed one. In these songs dwells indeed a distant and relative flavor of names, never buried in time, such as Nick Drake and Cat Stevens. There is instead much more sauce towards more current and important songwriters - at the edge of stylistic plagiarism - I am talking about Ben Howard and Damien Rice.

An impeccable clean production, for three-quarters of an hour of unplugged polished pop, but that winks at the American tradition. The guitars intertwine smoothly behind sparse and never intrusive keyboard echoes, often entrusted to the rhythmic direction of a sharp yet soft drum, especially when playing the tom toms. Occasionally, from the desolation, relaxed strings and some folk instrument emerge in a solo phase, like the beautiful mouth harmonica that closes Long Way Down. At times the pop imprint is partially kept at bay by some compositions with a seventies aftertaste, where Country-Blues passages sneak in, smelling of an already heard but glorious past.

Nothing new, but the quality is tangible and is listenable, in all its relaxed, dull, and complacent essence.

Enjoy your walk. Wherever you are, wherever you want to go...