Richard Walters - Golden Veins
Golden Veins, Richard Walters' first album since 2016's A.M., marks not only his musical debut for Cooking Vinyl, but also his first since becoming a family man. In fact, it was just before the release of A.M. that he and is wife discovered that they were expecting a baby. The nine songs that make up Golden Veins are therefore, not surprisingly, a deeply personal and evocative collection, an anthology born of raw emotion and new experiences, primal visions of a world now viewed with a fresh perspective.
His voice still possesses that familiar haunting mix of husky ethereal tones and gentle falsetto, delivered over nuanced layers of guitar, keys and sparse electronica. You will almost certainly have heard his songs before on American television dramas, movingly underpinning the emotional climaxes in episodes of everything from Grey's Anatomy to Private Practice and CSI Miami. With a compositional style that fuses elements of experimentalism with intimate textured vocals reminiscent of both David Gates (Bread) and David Gilmour (Pink Floyd), as well as fellow Oxfonians, Radiohead, Golden Veins is an album that elevates itself to vertiginous heights, creating a collection that possesses significantly more depth and substance than a collection of box-set pre-credit closers.
Stand out tracks include the ironically titled Big Joy; tender reminiscences in The Dawn Chorus on Tape; and the melancholic meanderings of This Is Where It Ends. The album's title is inspired by Kintsugi, a Japanese art-form of broken pottery in which the pieces are re-assembled and cracks painted over. This song, in turn, becomes a moving metaphor for anyone whose life has been put back together by a loved one.
8/10
