Western Oregon Journal

The cynical music searcher decides to erase MTV from their television and adhere to word of mouth for musical suggestions, thus experiencing a quality of selection beyond anything mass marketing can provide. With the employment of such a method, the listener allows for the discovery of talents like Amos Lee.

In his self-titled debut, Lee's lyrical gathering is rivaled but soulfully completed by a mysterious voice that seems to lose its real owner. Lee sings somewhere between folk and soul and passes between the urban-urbane and swinging back porch, while pushing poetical highs and lows both of auditory and artful manner.

He eclectically melds piano, acoustic guitar and organ, picking simply on some and pushing others to a race with his voice, doing so while expelling admiration in his values of family, friends, ruffled spirituality and rebellion in pieces like "Love in the Lies": I ain't no wide-eyed rebel/Oh, but I ain't no preacher's son/And now I see the trouble and all the loving that I've done.

The storyteller sings words so caringly crafted they must be retreads of past paths like in "Keep it Loose, Keep it Tight": Well I walked over the bridge/Into the city where I live and I saw my old landlord/Well we both said hello/There was no where else to go/'Cause his rent I couldn't afford.

Amos Lee is wound as tight and plays as brilliantly as a well-tuned guitar. As a whole, each song is a part of an entrancing, mind-sticking riff that the listener wants to keep in their head.

Lee's forebears are many, and contemporaries of his skill, stature and consistency are non-existent. One will be lucky to hear his bars on the radio but hope not to see anything resembling a music video on the tube.

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