We get so used to modern songs being of the moment and a bit throw-away that we sometimes forget the profundity and power that can lie at the heart of the better-crafted ones. It is all very well writing songs about wild nights out, brief encounters and, increasingly in the modern pop world, songs that seem to, ironically and unintentionally, highlight the shallowness of the world. But it takes a skilled writer to drill into the human experience.
Needle and Thread is an album which does just that, and Vincent Van Beethoven (actually musician and engineer Joe Finstrom) can do it so well because he not only spent five years building his initial ideas into a 12-track album but also because such insights and understandings as found within his songs, only reveal themself over the passage of time.
The first two singles have already laid the ground for the album’s release. Here We Go is spacious, graceful and filled with lush textures, and October Sky is a more earnest and direct song, yet also displaying that same balance of understatement and effectiveness, grace and groove.
Two incredible songs down and one great album to come.
