Album Review: Dan Wilde - This is the Place (Littlest Mojo)

This debut release by Blackpool-born singer-songwriter Dan Wilde, reveals a musician who manages to combine a great sense of melody with an expressive flair for song structure with a dozen original compositions of startling quality. With one of those voices that expresses the sort of ordinary warmth necessary to convey such delicate songs, in the same manner as Blondel's Eddie Baird or more famously the late Gerry Rafferty, Wilde knows his songs well before he starts singing. There's some fine string accompaniment courtesy of Richard Curran, featured most recently on Ian Bailey's outstanding Tower Songs album as well as being part of Angie Palmer's band, whose violin, viola and mandolin work embellishes an already superb album. The cherry on top so to speak.

The songs range from the beautifully engaging Nearest I Have To a Home, from which the album's title derives, the sprightly Wait Until Tomorrow complete with John Martyn-esque slapped guitar and fluid mandolin fills, the feel good approach of Look Out, complete with Curran's fleetingly organic violin work, through to the achingly sensitive Nowhere, reminiscent of a young Steve Tilston and the melancholic Unkind. How Will I Know accurately sums up the ever questioning nature of youth, with a beautifully arranged song, once again augmented by Curran's intuitive violin playing, underpinning Wilde's crisp finger-picked guitar.   

Produced by Gary Hall and Ian Bailey, THIS IS THE PLACE proves that there is still room in an otherwise cluttered music world for song makers who straddle the ever narrowing borders of contemporary acoustic folk, Celtic rock and popular song in the same cultural ball park as Nick Drake, John Martyn and Richard Thompson.