The 64th FYC Album – Various Artists (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

The process between the first-round longlist, nomination and becoming one of the precious few artists who win a Grammy is a long and intricate process. And, as with all such selection processes, a lot of very worthwhile creativity doesn’t make it through to the final stages. which is why Bongo Boy Records decide to capture the bigger picture through the release of their excellent FYC music series.

The music found here represents just some of the excellent tracks which were entered into the process and if you are looking to find a cross-section of new, rising and established artists to check out, you could do a lot worse than give these excellent compilations a spin. and the latest, the 64th, is as packed with all manner of music from across the spectrum as you could hope to find. Think of it as a taster of some of the best music doing the rounds today, and Bongo Boy Records have done the work for you, compiled this excellent 2 disc album so all you have to do is sit back, listen and fall in love with some of the best music of the moment.

Here you will find music to fit all tastes. From the stadium ready rock of Fiction Syxx’s Caught Up In The Moment, a perfect blend of mainstream AOR (touches of Boston’s wide-screen sound flit through the track) and forward-thinking alternative rock or Seay’s understated and beautiful Dream, it covers a lot of musical ground.

Junior Burke’s Coming Home From Shiloh is a gorgeously lilting slice of folk, the heart-wrenching tale of a woman waiting for her Civil War hero to return from a war that ended sixty years previous. Color Blind is Annemarie Picerno’s soul-blues anthem writ large as only her voice can do and there is even some elegant modern classical piano in the form of Bruce Leto Jr.’s Ballade No 3.

The second disc kicks off with the gorgeously exotic ragga-pop of Windwalker’s Sweet Comfort, embraces its own moments of pure delicacy with Karen Salicath Jamali’s Blue Angel, a piece seemingly forged just as much out of space as chiming piano notes and Gar Francis gives us a lesson in laid back and loquacious blues with Take Away This Rain. Things are rounded off with ObLiveA’s bold and bombastic rock sound, it’s big and it is most definitely clever.

We live in an age where music is all around us, sometimes there is too much seemingly suffocating or able to pull the listener don some obscure “if you like that, you’ll like this” rabbit holes. but there is another way, a safer way and a way to get straight to the best music without taking any detours or finding yourself down dead ends. And that way is to pick up a copy of the 64th FYC compilation, every track is a winner and the album is diverse and musically broad-minded. In short, it takes all of the work out of finding the best new music around.