Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Time, it’s sacred to us all, but some choose to abuse its trust and meaning by frittering away the seconds and minutes that add content to the day and make the hours meaningful. Time is not honour bound to push our voice, but instead will carry it if we are willing to walk the Gravel Road and count the stones that get into our boots, that tears at the soles of our worn-out socks, and which we are willing to abandon and tread in bare feet to achieve our goal…then Time will offer us the world.
Michael Kessler is heavily influenced by Time, not only as an horologist of some standing, but by his guiding resolution when it comes to music, especially that has impacted him on his journey, and in his seismic recording, Gravel Road, those boots have walked a million miles and been witness to a thousand songs and produced in tandem a selection of tracks that truly dig Time.
The addition of Georgia Rae, Ernest Brusubardis IV and Joe Vent, as well as the encouragement and effect of Gary Tanin, to the album is to honour the requisite of being unabashed and blatantly unpretentious, but overwhelmingly cool, played with intent, but not as to affect the listener’s belief in gentle pleasure; and as the music plays, as instrumentals and sung beauties meld and hang in the air like the forbidden fruit tempting those first settlers of Eden, so that gravel road turns into a highway of musical force, one that is easily strode as it is pleasant and enjoyable to witness the view and scenery that accompanies it.
Interpretation is in the eye of the beholder, and even in Bob Dylan’s Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn), which has been covered extensively, perhaps notably by the exceptional Manfred Mann, what is offered is reverential, but entirely placed in Michael Kessler’s own voice, his own hugely gracious interpretation.
With tracks such as Roanoke, You Ain’t Going Nowhere, the superb Cherokee Shuffle, Ain’t No More Cane On The Brazos, and the artistically succulent Morning Dew adding a genre blurring complexity and stirring beauty to the narrative, Michael Kessler reaches in Time as he walks his own gravel road, but does so with a brush in hand to sweep the path clear for others to follow with heart and recognition of humility and fierce insight.
A terrific album, one that finds Time in a playful and adoring mood.
Michael Kessler releases Gravel Road on April 12th.
Ian D. Hall