Mentioned in Dispatches: Best of It – Cam Wilson

We get so used to the old singer-songwriter routine, strum strum, sing sing, strum strum, a process that often feels as if the lyrics and the music exist in two different worlds, that when someone comes along like Cam Wilson, you want to fling the window open wide and scream”Yes!” to the world at large. No? Just me, then.

But listen to Best of It, and you’ll see what I mean…or should that be, hear what I mean. The way his deft, finger-picked guitar lines seem to swoop in and out of the melody, sometimes echoing the vocals, sometimes creating an alternative soundscape for them to dance over. The way a beat ebbs and flows in and out of the song. The way that the song is coated with just a slight feeling of cosmic ambience. And just how well crafted the song is in general. It feels like the ushering in of a new age after a decade of wide-brim hatted, skinny-jeaned troubadour-poets with just a basic working knowledge of A minor and nothing new to say.