Singer-songwriter David Newbould’s roots are in Toronto, Canada, but he has been living in America for a long time, first in New York City and then in Austin, Texas and currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee since 2009. At ‘Rootstime’ I have already been able to review three albums by this musician in the past and also his latest album “Power Up!”, which will be released on June 10th. ended up in my pile of CDs to be discussed again, for which my heartfelt thanks.
The first David Newbould record to be reviewed here was “The Long Way Home” in 2009, followed by the 2013 album “Tennessee” and the 2016 EP “The Devil In His Name”. David Newbould’s voice always reminds us of that of ‘Talking Heads’ frontman David Byrne. In recent years he evolved very strongly in the direction of Americana and easy-to-hear alternative rock music. We can now hear that clearly in the eleven tracks on “Power Up!” as for example in the powerful album opening title track and in the following track “Peeler Park”. The song tempo then slows down a bit in the songs “Blood On My Hands”, “The Lawn” and the ‘spoken word’ song “Home Depot Glasses” brought to a catchy organ tune (see 2nd video).
As a multi-instrumentalist, David Newbould himself plays about ten different instruments for the recording, while album producer Scot Sax also took care of a series of instruments. For some other tracks guest musicians have appeared who have made some contribution to the songs. All songs were composed by David Newbould himself with the exception of the title track which he co-wrote with Scot Sax and the song “Ready For The Times To Get Better” which can be heard on the first video which is the first single from this CD and a very special song. cover version of a 1978 single by country singer Crystal Gayle.
The odd one out on this record is the intriguing song “That Was Another Time” that David Newbould performs in an acoustically subdued first half with only soft piano accompaniment, but which then explodes into a blazing rock song with shrill guitar sounds. In addition to the two songs that we have shown on the attached videos, our personal preference goes even further to the very strongly sung songs “Last Letter”, “One Last Dance” and the two album closing songs “Sunrise Surprise” and “Diggin’ In ”. “Power Up!” by David Newbould is in our opinion one of the most startling albums of 2022 so far, but we are indeed not even halfway through the year, so it is now up to the others to surpass this record.