Lasting Footprints – Byorn Gold (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

As the last instalment of the three EP deliveries that will make up Byorn Gold‘s latest album, Elody (For My Children Part 1), we come to songs themed around that part of his children’s journey from birth to adulthood that sees them head out into the world. Having followed them from their first footsteps and then through the difficult teenage years, Lasting Footprints deals with the conflicting emotions of a parent watching them prepare to build their own lives. It’s an excruciating emotional time, one when you have to deal with that feeling that you can no longer keep them safe, that they need to grow into their potential, that they are now adults themselves.

“Guardian Angel,” which opens the EP, sums up not only the overall feeling that hangs over all four songs found here but seems to weave its way through the album as a whole, that idea that having brought life into the world, you have to let it flourish. The hope is that you have taught them well enough to have a good moral compass, know right from wrong and to be able to make the right choices. But also the understanding that they will occasionally fall, and when they do, all you can do is be there to help them back up on to their feet. Using spacious blends of picked acoustic guitars and shards of sonics, cascades of chiming notes and deft electric guitar motifs, the room that allows everything to breathe also leaves the words and the sentiment front and centre.

Out of all of these poignant songs, it is perhaps this one that speaks to every listener, and even if you are not a parent, there will always be some special person or significant other that you picture when you listen to this. And that is the power of music, and particularly Byorn’s music, the ability to put complex feelings into short sonic sentiments, ones that we all feel were written especially for us, for each individual listener.

The natural successor to these initial thoughts of a child flying the nest is “I Hope That You’ll Find”. Shuffling grooves drive this song of optimism, one that expresses the hopes they have for their child, now a young adult, and a life where they will make the most of opportunities, find the people that make them happy and, of course, never forget the parents who raised them. The relationship has changed; they are still your child but an adult too, someone who is now, in many respects, your equal.

The country tones of “Got Used To” remember the familiarity of the household with young children in it, which, in the blink of an eye, is gone. As guitars riff and the buoyant beats lay down a rootsy groove, Byorn laments over the passage of time and the natural loss of the family unity, again a reminder that we are all on our paths and even our children only walk a parallel path for a certain length of time. Before you realise it, you are back walking your original path, the one that you started on before you had a family.

“The Best I Can Be” takes this sentiment even further, and it is now the parent’s time to reminisce on how bringing up children has made them a better person too, someone with purpose and someone who, hopefully, has done as the title states, has done their best. Parenting is a two-way street; the incredible irony is that father and child change each other as they live and grow together.

As a final comment on raising children and family life, “The Best That I Can” is perhaps the perfect place to end, a footnote that sums up everything perfectly. Each EP in this series is a journey, a personal sonic photo album that follows the story of one parent’s thoughts and hopes for their children. Snapshot songs, if you like, and as great as each is, you get the whole picture only when you play the whole album.