Label: unsigned

Producer: Adrian Hannon and Paul Turner

Release Date: April 2007

One inescapable truth facing many of today's most 'successful' songsmiths is that, in a digitally distributed music world, (where a portable CD player is an absolute embarrassment to your kids!) standing out like a diamond among bricks is a very difficult thing to do.. that is, of course, if you don't possess the kind of rare energy and pure inventiveness that Paul Turner has in the palm of his hand and in absolute creative abundance!

Paul Turner is the kind of contemporary singer songwriter that you have to take very seriously indeed. I feel a sense of inadequacy writing this review on a PC keyboard when I should be writing the review on a 'proper' writer's typewriter like they did back in the day.. if you're going to go and write and co-produce a spectacular album, the least the reviewer can do is use the 'proper' tools and I somehow don't fee like a PC keyboard is worthy! It's all I've got though.. so I'll be as professional as I can to make up for it!

The opening track City Lights is a ridiculously brilliantly written masterpiece that takes you back to the days of classic songwriting - depth of perception, lyrical structural magnificence, and cool focused vocals to enhance the experience further. There's some really cool musicianship riding on the engaging arrangement and the production and engineering are far above anyone's expectations for a track laced with sixties production ingenuity and millennium cleverness! City Lights, Ladies and Gents, is an absolute Godsend at a time when we really do need this kind of blessing to add to the soundtracks of our lives!

Be Happy carries the torch that was lit when we first pressed the Play Button for City Lights. Watch out for the soul caressing strings balanced beside the smooth and seamless vocals! Again, Paul's approach to his songwriting are highly inventive, and again, the sheer depth of creativity is outstanding! Angel's Cry on the other hand, has the kind of power that Seal's work did when it was first unleashed on the world (witness - Kiss from a rose). Here we have some very fine and commercially superior songwriting that confirms yet again, the sheer excellence in approach that we've all been without for so long!

Love Meteorite is an intriguing title for an equally intriguing and emotionally powerful song complete with the kind of electro/acoustic rock playing that drives the vocals and lyrics straight into the core of your heart and you have to be prepared for this to happen all over again with the remarkably well written Room where we're treated to some lovely strings and harmonica used to the greatest effect with some magnificent production to keep things clean!

Poison is one of my favourite songs on this album.. oh and City Lights.. what an enticement! With Poison, Paul's approach is to be non-introspective or melancholy but rather to be startlingly and electrifyingly subjective and determined. It's a very clever example of today's innovativeness that I mentioned earlier as being very hard to find and all the more reason why I find it easy to classify Paul Turner as a major contender for world class songwriting in anyone's league division!

Come With Me, I know, has already received widespread critical acclaim for it's maturity in approach and for it's musical splendour on a commercially inducing level, but behind all of this is a very sincere and magnificently realized sample of fine songwriting and expression. It's another classic on an album that is completely flawless in every aspect and I can only presume that Oscar Gaona's mastering at Studios 301 in Sydney, was a process of 'classy' and 'embracing' involvement rather than an exercise in sound glamour. Well done guys... it's just brilliant!

Soul In Air is the track I returned to after grabbing another coffee and I have to confess that all the way up and down the stairs I kept thinking... ohhhhhhh thank youuuuuu Amy!!!! (Amy Stephens - Paul's Media contact in the US). Reviewing this album has been an absolute joy and the joy extends to this rather beautiful song of endearment that often sparkles in relationships and more commonly in 'true' empathetic romance. Carcassonne meanwhile, highlights Paul's remarkable sense of the extraordinary in the most ordinary of subjective situations.. something he does with seeming ease in all of his songs but perhaps a little more defiantly in his approach to crafting this little masterpiece of alternative folk/pop.

The album closes with the rather nicely performed and eloquently designed, Clear Blue, where Paul's acoustic playing is the stuff of many a guitarist's dreams and the production, yet again, is the icing on the cake. It should be noted that the playing throughout this album has been entirely seamless and excitingly executed! It's an album that deserves much praise and appreciation for the inspired innovation as well as for the sheer magnitude of excellence all round.. if Paul turner is playing at a location you can reach... then I'd suggest you take the day after the show off.. you'll owe it to yourself to recuperate sensibly from such an invigorating and soul enriching experience!

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