This Town

Album Review

On the sonically expansive title cut — "This Town" — Steve Smith creates an intriguing musical space that prevents the melancholy of the lyric from weighing the song down. The singer wishes to escape to a town, any town, where one can fade into an anonymous life. And while his the reason for his escape is never made clear, he seems to have learned a lesson: wherever he goes next, he will not fool himself into believing that someone will save him. While the sonic fingerprint of This Town is present throughout, Smith varies the tempos and arrangements. "Restless" is the kind of power pop song that bands like Badfinger did so well way back in the '70s, filled with big hooks and charged vocals; "Universe," on the other hand, is an easy flowing ballad, and there's the lovely "Smile" that smartly adds fiddle, providing a wistful undercurrent not unlike an old Rod Stewart love song. As a writer, Smith has a knack for the well-written, expansive pop song. There are a couple bonus cuts at the end of This Town (though the listener may just experience these as the last two tracks of the album), the harder rocking pop of "Late Nights and Street Fights," and the acoustic "Days Go By." ~ Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr., Rovi