Singer-songwriters appear to be two-a-penny these days. It would seem that every acoustic guitar-welding twenty-something with skinny jeans and complicated hair, an axe to grind and a working knowledge of the key of A minor is happy to tag themselves thus. They have the image and the attitude, the social media presence and a neat line in merch…they have everything, though more often than not, they don’t have the songs. Which, at the end of the day, is all that should really matter.
And this is where Miles East comes in. For, if the deluded creature I have just described sits at one end of the talent spectrum, Miles undoubtedly sits at the other. And his latest album, Between Lightning And Thunder, is all the justification I need to back up such a claim.
Songs! It’s all about the songs. From the deft and harmonious slice of Laurel Canyon-esque grace of Better Than Here, which opens the album, to the loving and lovely All I Need, which closes it, it is ten examples of a singer-songwriter at their creative peak.
Lucky To Be Here Tonight is the sweetest and most grateful sentiment ever written into song, For A Sky of Crimson wanders into a sort of ethereal, ambient country lilt, and All Hands On Deck feels like the sort of thing that Crowded House’s Neil Finn might have come up with, which is about as good as it gets in my book.
If you are a singer-songwriter, measure yourself by this album. If you are not this good, you know there is work to do. If you are this good, then you are probably lying.