For most rock musicians, the schedule goes: album, tour, rest, repeat. Joseph Arthur has a slightly busier time. Since his last album, he has released four EPs of new material, exhibited his paintings in various cities, opened his own art gallery in Brooklyn, had a charity named after one of his songs (Michael Stipe’s In the Sun Foundation, for Katrina victims) and written countless poems (“I got a message from a fan / He said / You are now worse than Bon Jovi / I guess it made me realise / That I kinda like Bon Jovi”). Such variety gives Arthur licence to narrow things down on this album, concentrating on a sound that evokes the loose, rocking swagger and country melancholy of early-1970s Stones, a style he has down to a fine art on Heart’s a Soldier, Turn You On and Faith.

Fargo FR21159

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