Andrew and Noah VanNorstrand - All the Good Summers (music review)

One listen to Andrew and Noah VanNorstrand's album All the Good Summers and it's a beautiful, romantic album. It's also full of depth and musicianship. Get yourself away from household rumblings of computers, refrigerators, and televisions. This is music to be absorbed.

 

The album opens with the engaging rhythms, vocals and harmonies of "Jetstream" and sets the tone for what is assuredly not a mere folk album.  Percussion sets it apart and pulls the acoustic instruments and the electric guitar into a moving frolic through the senses.

Lovers of classic southern rock will say the second track, "Samuel Mason," is the best tune on the album, and deservedly so.  This gem of a tune is the stuff my summers were made of in the late 1970s, and it has a timeless quality that could place it decades back or on a stage at any outdoor festival today.

The VanNorstrand brothers make most of the music on this album with their guitars, mandolins, fiddles and vocals.  Andrew adds banjo and Noah, percussion.  They are joined by Pete Sutherland on piano, keyboards and organ, Kevin Dorsey on bass, Rachel Bell on accordion, and Dana Billings and CV Abdallah sharing credits on drums.

Noah's wife Kailyn Wright also provides vocals and I especially like her harmony work on "Faded to a Dream."  In the lyric, summer fades to a dream, while the music flows strong and ebbs, then builds to a crescendo at the end.  Kailyn Wright is later featured on "Elinor," a traditional style folk song.  Here Kailyn and the VanNorstrand brothers have produced a lovely "old soul" sort of tune, both lyrically and melodically.

My favorite lyric from All the Good Summers is on the track "You Are the One in My Dreams."  Andrew VanNorstrand's banjo and Rachel Bell's accordion draw the listener in and then disappear as the words emerge, "You are the one in my dreams / and I don't know what that means / you are the one that I see / and I only wish I could be."

"The Wasp's Goggles" is an innovative instrumental and a most pleasing surprise.  Upbeat and jazzy, the fiddle floats off the guitars and the effect is magical and a bit of a "buzz."  The percussion sets a Latin jazz beat that practically demands moving feet and body.

I said this was a romantic album and "Love and Winter" proves it,  turning the tempo down a bit, but retaining a bit of the jazz.  The VanNorstrands have a flair for fitting the rhythm to the message of the lyric.  I can only say what I take away from this lyric.  Love has seasons and when we find it, it is not always the season we want it to be.  In an album entitled All the Good Summers, the VanNorstrands have given the listener much more than summer, they have given us the desire for summer to return. 

Summer, it seems, has indeed gone, according to "Only One Season."  It is a somber lyric, "Once I was a young man / And thought that I could do no wrong / Thought of only one season / When nights were warm / And days were long."  With the simple instrumentation of this tune - guitar, organ, and the banjo I love - the album takes a turn back to folk music and some Celtic roots.

"Lady Pole (or A Night at Lost-Hope)" brings more of that Celtic touch to the strings.  Then a solemn fiddle backed by piano, tugging at heart strings joins in.  Finally, here comes the rhythm again, provided by guitar and percussion and it is another beautiful instrumental. 

Much as I love the singing and stories on this album, the instrumentals really are the ones which leave me smiling.  And so, listening to "A Song for Reverend P.D. Midgett III," I smile again and reminisce about every old preacher I ever knew.  Add the fiddle and the preacher starts to stomp.  On this track also, Andrew's banjo has just the right touch. 

"Where Should I Go" is the final tune and I thought the name sounded like a gospel song.  But it is really a full on rock and country romp. Go ahead and two-step, it's irresistible.  These guys do not look like they would know the electric guitar sound of 1960s country music, but they nailed it.  They added drums to spice it up and a bridge that has you screaming for more as they rock down the last bars of the album. 

Be sure to crank up the volume on All the Good Summers.  You are not going to want to miss a note or a chord. 

Listen to the music and find out more about All the Good Summers at http://andrewandnoah.com/news_blog.html

The video and tribute to Jane Austen's beloved book Sense and Sensibility, to the beautiful tune "Elinor"  -