Album Review

Luke Ritchie – The Water’s Edge

• 3rd Jul 2012

In 2010, Luke Ritchie set himself a challenge – to write a song a week for six months. Between January and July, he composed 26 songs, recorded them at home on acoustic guitar and posted them online as podcasts. And to Mr. Ritchie’s amazement , the songs had been downloaded 8500 times and Ritchie was ready to pick the best for an album he planned to put out himself.

This album upon first hearing it, should not be judged as a typical ‘folk record’ or a typical ‘songwriter affair’, it is instead an album of varied sounds and emotion, liveliness mixed with folk, pop style lyrics mixed with rocking sounds, the album is a package of emotion, purpose and passion.

Even Ritchie himself claims that when making the album, he wasn’t looking to make it a “soft, samey album”. The man himself says he was inspired by the sounds of “Led Zeppelin, Soundgarden and grunge, as well as people like Paul Simon and Sam Cooke”. He also went on to add about making the album himself that he liked “dynamic singers and powerful songs – and you can get a lot of power from acoustic instruments”.

And with The Water’s Edge we get just that, an album that packs power as well as solidarity and if you will ‘coolness’ about the album. The opening two songs immediately set the tone for the album, with the opening track ‘The Lighthouse’ being a very much laid back and gentle song to introduce the album; when the next track gets to our ears you will really understand what Mr Ritchie is all about.

From the track ‘Shanty’ onwards, the themes jump around from being laid back folk songs to a raunchy and faster tempo sound with songs like ‘Butterfly’. But Mr Ritchie’s main attractions lie with his most more laid back folk songs, ‘Looking Glass’, ‘Song to Sundays’ and as mentioned before, ‘The Lighthouse’. Although these are Mr Ritchie’s main stand out songs that should not overshadow the rest of this album – it’s a solid debut packed with your everyday folk songs that would appeal to most and earn him some new fans and plaudits alike.