Tony McLoughlin - Ride the Wind

  by Malcolm Carter

published: 3 / 11 / 2010

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Review

As the years pass and we find the search for new music to inspire and touch us gets increasingly more difficult there’s a tendency to fall back on the music of our youth, music we understood and felt comfortable with but which still moves us. As obviously as time moves on the feeling that we’ve heard it all before gets stronger and stronger. Then an artist like Tony McLoughlin comes along who is far from breaking any new ground but in taking various elements from rock, country, folk and even blues has produced an album that although could have been made any time in the last 40 years sounds refreshingly contemporary. There is not a single song on this ten-track album that makes you hit the skip button. In fact you’re more likely to want to play the whole album through again as soon as it is finished. ‘Ride the Wind’ is McLoughlin’s fourth album yet it’s the first one he has recorded in his native land of Ireland. Not being familiar with his previous work I’m not in a position to comment if the albums he cut in Nashville or Nuremberg were influenced by their surroundings but ‘Ride the Wind’ has a warm, homely sound about it which may well have been brought on by McLoughlin recording the songs on familiar ground. McLoughlin has been compared to Tom Petty in the past and although McLoughlin’s lived-in vocal style does owe some little debt to some of Petty’s early work the sound of the guitars throughout ‘Ride the Wind’ shows that maybe Petty is more than a slight influence on McLoughlin. There’s a distinct lack of rough edges even when McLoughlin rocks out on songs like ‘Let the River Run’ ; the production by Ben Reel who also supplies guitar and vocals throughout the album is smooth but doesn’t suffocate the songs and frames this set of McLoughlin originals perfectly. There are some really smart moments on the album; Julianne Reel adds beautiful backing vocals to a number of songs but the way her vocals are recorded on the last song, ‘Treeline’, brings out the sensitivity in not just that particular song but in McLoughlin’s vocals too. Again a warm, friendly sound envelopes the song especially the sound of the organ and harmonica but Julianne’s vocals push the song from sounding good into something special. It’s a perfect way to close the album and simply leaves you longing for more. It’s certainly the most affecting song on ‘Ride the Wind’. But that doesn’t mean that McLoughlin closed the album with the strongest song on the album. The opening track, ‘You Look To Me’, where McLoughlin wears his Petty influences proudly on his sleeve, is a solid rocker, the kind that is instantly familiar but still sounding fresh every time you hear it. It’s the kind of song that will have you mouthing the words as McLoughlin performs it in concert; it’s a feel-good song that you just can’t sit still to. With the second song, ‘Ride the Wind’, you start to think that McLoughlin isn’t going to put a foot wrong throughout the forty-three minutes that it takes to listen to this album and he doesn’t. Tommy Womack co-wrote that title song with McLoughlin so no more needs to be said about what a classic track it is. The fact that McLoughlin gets the opportunity to write with other artists as acclaimed as Tommy Womack goes to show that he is very much a musicians' musician. ‘Ride the Wind’ has such a catchy melody, McLoughlin’s yearning vocals can’t fail to impress and the band and backing vocalists really shine on this song. So it goes on, the melodies flow, the playing is superb and McLoughlin makes a strong case here for being up there with the best of our current vocalists. As I wrote earlier, McLoughlin isn’t doing anything new but what he does gets your attention and just won’t let you go. Maybe the best thing about this music that McLoughlin makes is that you just can’t pigeonhole it; it’s simply great music, superbly sung, played and produced and will appeal to a wide audience. I have to go as far as to say that this is a perfect album. It’s the perfect length, it leaves you wanting more and every time you listen to it there’s a new favourite Tony McLoughlin song. To say I’m impressed would be an understatement.

Track Listing:-

1 You Look To Me
2 Ride The Wind
3 You Look For It All
4 Not Too Far From Memphis
5 Mother's Son
6 Deep Under Your Spell
7 I Like The Way
8 Soul Brother Soul Sister
9 Let The River Run
10 Treeline