Album Review

Jon Gomm – Secrets Nobody Keeps

• 25th Nov 2013

Acoustic guitar virtuoso Jon Gomm has been making music for a few years now. But until Stephen Fry began to tweet about his amazing skills his music wasn’t widely known. This new album’s title is a reference to the sudden fame that he achieved through social networking. And Gomm’s list of high profile fans now includes the likes of Eric Clapton, Chaka Khan, Jon Anderson and David Crosby.

Gomm is a superb guitar player. But what separates him from others is his ability to achieve a range of sounds from the one instrument, usually his favourite guitar which is apparently called Wilma. Gomm uses the guitar as drum, bass and occasionally synthesiser. He has also been known to retune it into a different key on stage without missing a single note. And his fans have supported his music through a successful Pledge Music campaign that allowed this album to be recorded.

Passionflower is Gomm’s best known track; the video has over five million views on YouTube. It’s worth a watch if only to see exactly how he manages to achieve such a wide range of sounds from a single instrument. This is the stand out of the album’s ten tracks. And the passionate vocals are pretty good too, even if they are overshadowed by the musical brilliance that Gomm displays.

There are several instrumental tracks on the album, including the oriental sounding Wukan Motorcycle Kid, written especially for, and debuted in, Beijing. The rather extravagantly titled Orville (The Secret Of Learning To Fly Is Forgetting To Hit The Ground) is also a fine track. And the instrumental cover of Chaka Khan’s Ain’t Nobody is a quite lovely display of guitar skills. Of the others, Gomm’s slow and delicate version of The Police’s Message In A Bottle is a very good, and very different, interpretation of the song. And closing track Everything is also very good, the melancholy feel balanced by a sense of hope for the future.

On two tracks, the reggae sounding Deep Cut and There’s No Need To Be Afraid, Gomm is joined on vocals and saxophone by Natasha Koczy, The pair give a very different sound and for me it doesn’t work quite as well. The female vocal does add variety, but frankly Gomm is good enough not to need accompaniment.

Jon Gomm is a quite outstanding musician. There is tremendous variety in his work, with elements of classical, blues and folk mixing with jazz phrasing and soulful vocals. And the melodic guitar sounds together with the percussive elements give great depth to the music. This is a very good album and one that deserves to be widely heard.

Venue: Secrets Nobody Keeps
Support Band: Performing Chimp Records