Geoff Baker “Adding Up The Everything We Lost” (Six String Whispers Music, 2008)

Very nice addition to the singer songwriter tradition.

Baker, from California, plans to release a trilogy of five song EPs this year and if they are as good as this, the initial instalment, they will be well worth watching out for. Playing the majority of the instruments himself and with some excellent lyrics Baker seems to work in same field as vintage Paul Simon or Jackson Browne. Referencing, among others,Dylan, Van Morrison and The Grateful Dead these are in the main forlorn love songs, stories of young lovers' relationships gone wrong. In “Indiana” the singer is heading from New York after a beating (him or her? It doesn’t tell). In “Hope is not a Compass, It’s a Cloud” his girl leaves him because he can’t tolerate the length of Grateful dead songs. There are arresting images and descriptions, “I’d never seen your old man look so old/Like someone took his air and left him standing there” and “I woke up next to you the morning your divorce came through/Backseat in a Little Rock parking lot with a head too hurt to be true/You prayed for love sweet love but baby I’m all they sent/Not much to look at or shake a book at but good for half the rent.

With a pleasant voice and a twinkling brace of instrumental flourishes on several of the songs Baker promises much and here delivers it. Hopefully the rest of his trilogy is of a similar calibre.

Date review added:  Monday, March 09, 2009
Reviewer:  Paul Kerr
Reviewers Rating:
Related web link:  artist website