Reviewed by Mike Rimmer

This is the simplest form of recording a CD. Take your songs, set up a mic, plug in your acoustic guitar and simply get your songs down live. Low budget, straight forward and simple. You live or die by the power of your performance and the strength of your songs. So where does this leave Scottish songwriter Johnny Caddell? At times this works nicely and Johnny's haunting voice echoes from the speakers with sparse beauty on songs like the anti war "Should It Be So?" and the inspiring title track. This is old fashioned stuff though and it's not hard to imagine Caddell playing his songs round the coffee bar scene of the early '70s church. Judged by 2001 standards, a lot of these songs, though very nice, tend to drag on a bit without enough hooky choruses to focus attention so these 14 recordings have a tendency to drift past without making an impact. Caddell has recently started working in a band situation and it'll be interesting to see how that will affect his songwriting. Basically a good start but he needs to work to bring some of these wandering songs into a more disciplined structure.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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