Articles & Reviews

Chuck Brodsky - Color Came One Day (ChuckBrodsky.com Records)

Chuck Brodsky is a phenomenal storyteller. He pours out these stories in the form of songs, while you sit breathlessly listening. COLOUR CAME ONE DAY is his sixth album and we are very sorry that we haven't yet got the first five, but we soon will have.

Brodsky is an old-fashioned songwriter who not only tells stories but also
invests them with his own opinions without becoming moralistic or preachy.
However his lyrics can often be described as critical observations. But there are also sad songs such as Claire and Johnny, which tells the story of a man who is forced to have his wife committed to an insane asylum. There is also the beautiful Trees falling, with the last verse…” Trees one day begin falling,
bulldozers clearing a path, for a really different future, no brakes - just
stepping on the gas..."

There is also a song like Miracle in the hills, about a doctor couple who
settle in a mountain village and there perform miracles on a human scale. There
is a particularly cynical song, Forest Hills Sub, concerning the
small-mindedness in the modern suburb; a gripping, love-filled song - Goat Man - about a wandering tramp; Dangerous times, about the dangerous period in which we now live: “We'll just fly the flag, sing God bless America, question people's patriotism who don't join in the hysteria...", but there's also a really funny song about the hotel rooms where musicians are frequently billeted - The room over the bar.

There is not a bad track on this album, even though it is almost an hour
long. Chuck Brodsky himself sings and plays guitar and the album was produced by JP Cormier, who also plays all the other instruments. These include guitars, electric and acoustic bass, fiddle, mandolin, banjo, percussion and keyboards, and he also regularly contributes harmony vocals. Cormier is therefore no ordinary band member, especially considering his masterly command of all the instruments and through his refined arrangements ensures an extra special quality which raises this album above the “ordinary” singer/songwriter offering. To give an example: the lyric “You lie down on the bed and you feel each one of the springs” in the song The room over the bar is followed immediately by a banjo solo which ensures that forever more when you hear a banjo solo you will associate it with a mattress that sticks into your back. In other instances, Cormier's contribution perfectly accentuates the melancholy tone and at all times strengthens the arrangements and the scope of the songs.

To summarise: this is a beautiful CD with wonderful songs, perfectly
performed in a manner that ensures you will not quickly tire of listening to it. Below we have printed a lyric from one of the songs, so that you can at least get an idea of the way in which Brodsky tells his tales, without the benefit of the melody, of course. Moreover, on his website you can find some of the numbers on the CD and listen to some of his earlier albums. Brodsky publishes his own albums, so you can order them from his website.