December 05, 2007
Amplifier

It’s unlikely that you’ll find an album of such precision and elegance as The Grey Race’s stunning debut Give It Love. Amidst lustrous acoustic guitars, rich percussive fills and the occasional cello, singer/songwriter Jon Darling plaintively eases his way through each compositions with a touching, poetic grace. “Try Not To Think” suggests Grant Lee Buffalo circa Fuzzy, “Jumping In” brings Elliot Smith to mind and the heavenly harmonies of “”From Me To You” suggests an almost celestial version of The Byrds. Elsewhere, the lush and hook-laden “Goodbye To You” may very well be one of the best songs of the year, while “On The Chin” comes with a positively charged grandeur. Although as a lyricist the New Zealand-born Darling is a classic romantic, fascinated by the corporeal (“We are but a flicker on the map/Learning to grow”), he’s got his dark side, too. “You see it’s easy without the pain,” he instructs in “Cracks,” “and twice as boring.” With a hushed delivery that can sing the moribund and the beautiful with the same amount of elevated courtliness, like the aforementioned Smith or Nick Drake, Darling has one of those voices that’s impossible to resist. Baleful and ecstatic, miserable and mirthful, his songs have a smoldering complexity that makes return listens keep paying off in new ways.