Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
We take it for granted what it means to be human, so much so that we openly embrace suggestions by the well-meaning and the devious in equal measure that we search for improvement which betrays the basic, the rudimentary source of our D.N.A. that we are a thinking, reactive and complicated collection of emotions that at times needs to express itself, to feel the pain, the pressure and the beauty in our memories.
After all we are rendered of threads, put together in complexity and given humanity, we are not blank expressions who can divine a message and act as if we are better than our surroundings, we should understand that we are Made Of Strings but that there is no puppet master who can have us mimic the actions of machines.
L.A. resident Greg Felden understands this calling and for one should be applauded and emotionally admired for being completely open on his debut full-length recording, Made Of Strings and in such a way that bows to the inevitability of change, even when we feel as if it is the last thing on Earth we want to do.
To be tender in your memory to someone is to show compassion, even when that sense of remark can no longer be returned for whatever reason, this is what makes sense of the world we live in, that we are not closed off, that we more than a dangling hook for fate to play with. It is one that sees Greg Felden influence a conversation with subtly, with knowledge and with kindness, whilst all the time working out as any human with a heart will do, what his place in the world now is.
Being raw, feeling overwhelmed is not an admission of defeat, instead it can raise the artist to a new level of conscious participation, one that is felt keenly across songs such as Take You Back Home, When The Change Comes, Tell Me What’s Broken and Ghosts. With immense contribution by Jason Gonzales, Jerry Borger, Ed Maxwell, Deacon Marrquin, Brian Whelen, Rich Hinman, Brian Wright and Al Sgro, Made Of Strings is the epitome of refusing to let the future hold you in fear, whilst understanding we are bound by the past to honour those we may lose, those we have loved with the elements that separates us from the pinstriped machines, compassion and humanity.
An album of sincerity, one that does not shy away from tackling the sensitive and the hard to reach.
Greg Felden’s Made Of Strings is out now.
Ian D. Hall