The great thing about coming to an album from which the artist has already released a fair number of the tracks as singles is that you will already have some understanding of the artist, their musical breadth, and scope. But it is when you find all of those tracks together in one place that you really begin to get a sense of the quest that they are on.

 

And so it is with Paul Cafcae and his latest album, Scarlet and Sparks. If the singles tell us that this is an artist with a sonically adventurous and genre-hopping character, the album, when taken as a whole, shows us the consistency of the artist’s sound.

 

“In my mind, this album pays tribute to two of my personally favourite Johns: Lennon and R Cash. Not sure if it came across but mixing unapologetic, sometimes agonizing social commentary with sincere love songs is exactly what Lennon did on “Imagine” 24 years ago, and Johnny Cash – well, in anything he ever did. Especially in his work with Rick Rubin, where he took a lot of “not his” songs and made them his. Like I did with Banks of Marble, Devil’s RIght Hand, and You Cannot Get to Heaven (my good friend and a great drummer, Zeb Barnow wrote this one ages ago for a band that he was in back in),” says Cafcae.

 

Scarlet and Sparks covers a lot of ground, stylistically and through what it says, and is a perfect example of how you can wander all over the musical landscape and still sound like yourself. And so we find everything from folk to punk to rock and roll, high-octane groovers to seductive ballads. But the common thread running through all of these songs is sonic truth. Paul Cafcae is a roots artist, and no matter what genre he chooses to explore, he manages to get right down to the essence of that genre. 

 

Forget Kafka-esque; Cafcae-esque is where it’s at! 

 

~Dave Franklin, The Big Takeover.