Dear friends,
Steve Morris at WCR FM has been listening to the box ep and wrote this review. Steve's show 'Roots and Branches' show is in my top friends list and can be heard every Thursday 10pm-12am at
www.wcrfm.com
DAN WHITEHOUSE
THE BOX E.P.
...it’s quite simply one of the very best releases of the year. Really. I’ve been listening to it on a daily basis for quite some time and it never ever disappoints. Never loses its emotional intensity. Never ceases to surprise with its musical invention.
Listen to the tension in We All Feel The Same Pain; the initial swell, the artisan chorus, the push and pull of melody against rhythm and the final release as all elements meet.
Marvel at Where Is The Love – my song of the year incidentally – a simply beautiful piece of music with pedal steel legend B.J. Cole adding a stunning landscape and Carina Round a harmony vocal that amplify Dan’s majestic vocal.
If I Grow Old is a deceptively arranged love song bolstered by June Mori’s elegant piano and Dan’s emotive falsetto. Holding My Head Under and I Saw The End both ably illustrate Dan’s excellence as a writer, delivering songs that are at once clearly personal and yet universal with words and melody sounding as though they might be stolen from your own diary and delivered with an intimacy that always makes listening an intensely personal experience.
Right Here is the key song to The Box in many ways; a tough song of defiant vulnerability that builds to a scorching emotional howl courtesy of Dan’s underrated, always tasteful guitar playing.
And that’s The Box. And That’s Dan Whitehouse. Musician and 6 Music presenter Tom Robinson gets it and growing audiences across the UK get it. They understand that this is truly fine music from one of the best kept secrets in music.
It would be easy to finish with some box opening tag line but this music neither needs nor deserves that; it just needs you to listen with an open heart.