For all the earnestness and pretension often inherent within the genre, singer-songwriter based folk holds a timeless role in popular music. Personal tales of life, love and loss are never going to go out of fashion and one man who clearly knows that is Conny Ochs. His collaboration with Saint Vitus frontman Scott ‘Wino’ Weinrich put the German’s name firmly on the map and, as such, 'Black Happy' is certain to receive a good deal more cursory listens from doom fanatics than one would expect from listening to it.
This is a record very much rooted in a love of the great American songwriters, and one that owes almost nothing at all to any sound that even vaguely approaches contemporary. There is nothing wrong with that, as such, but occasionally this essential aping of a classic musical route means that it is hard not to compare the song-writing of Ochs to his influences, and inevitably this means that the odd lyrical or vocal styling falls well short of the mark. Such is the dangerous territory of being a predominantly acoustic based singer-songwriter.
Nevertheless there are plenty of moments across this brief record that show Ochs is a cut above the average. Opener ‘Exit’ sets up the stall nicely for an album that openly displays deep personal feeling across its eleven tracks, whilst more up-tempo moments such as those that inflect ‘Borderline’ show that Ochs is clever enough to recognise the need for more than one string to be added to his songwriting bow. Closer ‘Mouth’ even manages to make the hackneyed use of harmonica seem almost charming.
Clearly Ochs’ great strengths as a songwriter lie in his personality, in the passion for the music he writes and performs. There are dud lines here and there, and it would be fair to say that he lacks a particularly distinctive voice, but everything is pulled off with enough confidence and, more importantly, heart to ensure that Ochs will win plenty of listeners over with ‘Black Happy’.
'Black Happy' is out now via Exile on Mainstream.
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This is a record very much rooted in a love of the great American songwriters, and one that owes almost nothing at all to any sound that even vaguely approaches contemporary. There is nothing wrong with that, as such, but occasionally this essential aping of a classic musical route means that it is hard not to compare the song-writing of Ochs to his influences, and inevitably this means that the odd lyrical or vocal styling falls well short of the mark. Such is the dangerous territory of being a predominantly acoustic based singer-songwriter.
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