Love In Hindsight – Byorn Gold (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

We live in a musical age where things seem to be less and less about having an overall plan and more about knee-jerk reactions. By this, I mean that the age of “write a batch of songs, record an album, tour the album, write a new batch of songs, record the next album…repeat until exhausted” seems to have been replaced by artists now firing off a stream of song releases, one-shot deals, unrelated to each other and not part of a bigger picture. I have always felt that it pays to have a plan.

Byorn Gold has a plan. A good one at that. Leading up to a full-length album release of Hindsight (20-20) he is first drip-feeding out the songs as three EPs, each covering a different aspect of life. Having dealt with the subject of Life with the previous release, this time he turns his attention to the mysterious subject of Love.

“So Bad (1-2-3)“, (released 1 Oct) kicks off this second of the three sonic chapters; smooth, soulful and sensuous, with a wonderful swing to the rhythm and kick to the beat, it shimmers along in groovesome fashion. It’s a song of regret and reflection, of looking back on what went wrong, of telling yourself that you will learn from your mistakes and of assuring yourself that you will do better in the relationship game next time. Sound familiar?

From here, things take a turn to the more positive. “Comme Je T’Adore“, or How I Adore You, is about the simplicity of love, old fashioned love, of finding someone that you really connect with. It also talks of how even the smoothest paths often don’t run in the straightest of lines and of how you find salvation in the act of surrendering to love, of committing whole-heartedly; having done so the narrator ends up in the place where he planned all along.

And if “Comme Je T’Adore” is about the realities of love in the real world, “Dream Girl” (releasing 20th Oct), as the name suggests, is about those first moments of a relationship, when the heart still skips when you see her, where you feel as if you are walking on air, of how that girl seems somehow not quite real, although all of your sense are running at full speed. It’s a sassy tune, upbeat yet soulful, full of energy, slightly euphoric and driven on by helpings of breezy brass.

Love in Hindsight ends with the heavenly “I Love You Still” (releasing 30 Oct), a sweet and scintillating song about falling hopelessly in love from first sight and how that feeling endures to this day. It feels like an old Motown ballad, something that you might have been listening to all of your life, albeit one very much of the here and now, the past re-visited, re-engineered and brought up to date, A perfect, and perfectly poised, way to end the album. A reminder that love conquers all.

It’s a great set of songs which between them cover all aspects of this most powerful of emotions, the good and the bad, the highs and the lows. Musically it runs from the delicate and deftly delicious to the more buoyant and upbeat, it balances groove with an equal amount of grace and the songs are as infectious as they are loaded with relatable meaning.

If the benchmark set on Life in Hindsight was already high, Love in Hindsight raises even those high sonic standards. The third EP will be about People in Hindslight – I wonder how THAT will sound and who will feature.