GF Patrick - One Town Over

  by Benjamin Howarth

published: 6 / 10 / 2020

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Born in Georgia (though raised in Philadelphia), GF Patrick has an unmistakable Americana drawl in his deep and resonant voice – he may look young in the photos, but it’s a voice that carries experience and authority. So, when he breaks into character and introduces himself as an “old hardworking man” who wants to prove his is “made of harder stuff” you have little trouble believing him. Such is the stuff that the Americana scene is made of. But when that voice adopts the character of a female refugee seeking solace from the wars of the Middle East, it still sounds sensitive and humane. ‘One Town Over’ is GF Patrick’s debut. Sensitively backed throughout by a three-piece band of guitar-bass-drums, each track feels fully realised – wringing every drop of emotion from these tales. Instead of dressing the songs up in country-tropes, the arrangements are tight and focused – a little reverb suffices where some would be reaching for the fiddle. Running to nearly fourteen tracks and nearly an hour, ‘One Town Over’ might seem a little long by modern standards. But if you can steady your Spotify-sapped attention span, ‘One Town Over’ is worthy of a closer listen. In fact, it is structured more like a live show than a conventional album, with the most arresting tracks coming towards the end – and though titles like ‘Beauty Fades’ and ‘Water Rising Up’ sound bleak, there is a driving intensity that suggests they could easily become anthemic singalongs in front of the right audience. In these Covid-19 times, its hard to know when we’ll next be packing into bar-rooms, but for when that day does come round again, GF Patrick has packaged up a very convincing CV. Highly impressive.

Track Listing:-

1 Mud
2 Trucker's Song
3 Refugee's Plea (Jungle Prayer)
4 One Town Over
5 Tennessee
6 Anger of Magdalene (Ain't No Future Workin' 9 to 5)
7 Butterfly Effect
8 James McGovern
9 Blood on the Bottle
10 Six-String Directions
11 Like Father
12 Till the Day We Die
13 Beauty Fades
14 Water Rising Up

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