Kevin Gordon
O Come Look At The Burning
Crowville Collection 4001
visit Kevin's website
also available on amazon
This is a disc that is going to sear itself into your mind with its descriptive intensity and blazing guitar playing, particularly when he puts the slide on. This disc was recorded live at a home studio, on 16-track tape and was done without laying down a rhythm track first. The vocals went for feel rather than the clean sound of overdubs, and this disc is all the more intense for the attention paid to that one detail. The over all feel of the songs has a haunting quality, think Edgar Allen Poe or H.P. Lovecraft as opposed to that graphic bloody slasher gore that passes for frightening in today’s literature. This feeling is strengthened by his combination of intense slide playing with a very poetic word scheme. From the opening fuzzed notes of “Watching The Sun Go Down,” to the ending of the disc there is a pressing intensity that is almost compelling on this disc. The title of the disc comes from the opening lines of this song, and the images keep darting into our
ears and imprinting upon our inner eyes that hold aural imagery in our minds. Pushed all the harder by the raw power of the music into a concrete form. There is a power here that is incessant and searing. His songs have a power to them that has been recognized, and also have been recorded, by such people as Keith Richards, Levon Helm, and Kate Campbell, to name but a few. This is a disc that almost certainly will not be on charts, but it most definitely important and should not be overlooked. It is one of the most powerful discs to grace the players in a very long time. One of those rare few that you are so glad you put on.