Album Review

Chris Burke –

• 19th Feb 2008

Who’d have thought it would be possible to write a song entitled ‘Birmingham’ and not only succeed indeed making it listenable but actually making Birmingham sound like somewhere it might be worth visiting one day.

Well it seems Chris Burke has managed just thi-…what’s that? Oh. It seems this soulful singer/songwriter is actually not from the grimy West Midlands homage to concrete at all but the OTHER Birmingham. In Alabama. USA. Which makes a lot more sense. And his environment has clearly had an influence his R’n’B influenced pop music.

There seems to be a trend at the moment of listing musical influences and then trying not to sound at all like them. For instance, I can’t hear any Aretha Franklin or Marvin Gaye in these songs. Not that that matters because they’re all thoughtful, soulful and well executed.

Singer/songwriters come and go with varying degrees of quality and success and right now it seems there is an opening for someone who’s not Jack Johnson or James Blunt. Someone with talent I mean. If Burke plays his cards right he could be that man. The songs are certainly strong enough, it’s just down to his marketing team now to ensure we’ve seen the back of Blunt!