Singletary, Marcus: Spiritual Dialogues

Ever evolving and never compromising, multi-instrumentalist Marcus Singletary returns with a 6 track EP split 50-50 between music and spoken word. It's one of the latter pieces that opens Spiritual Dialogues with a six second comment of 'You know, sometimes critics get it, sometimes they don't. So there you go...'. At this stage (and you can check them out for yourselves Smokin', Subversive Blues ) maybe best to mention that Marcus and I have crossed swords before, reasonably successfully on Smokin' and completely passing each other by on Subversive Blues. The long and short of it being that if you don't connect with something, well, you don't connect with it... The other slightly lengthier spoken tracks reveal firstly an early love for The Buckinghams, Spooky Tooth, Love and more, and latterly Singletary's laudable desire to stretch artistic boundaries and refusal to conform to the norm; both sentiments we can only applaud. So engaging are these sections that I'd have happily listened to much more of them than the two or so combined minutes they make.

Musically, we're offered three covers, Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away", Wayne Shorter's "Footprints" and "Wind And Wuthering", which is an 'original impression' of the final moments of the Genesis track "All In A Mouse's Night". Across all three Singletary lets loose, fiery, intense guitar workouts stabbing and jabbing for response and happy to leave you bloodied on the floor. Singletary provides guitar, drums, bass and vocals and he's skilled at all four, but with this artist things are never quite so simple. If you're looking for straight reimaginings of the tracks chosen, this is not the place to be. Instead the guitars consistently push at the boundaries and challenge you to stay the course as the rhythmical backing stays solid, true and singular. Whether you can find the entry point into Marcus's way of thinking never really seems to be at the forefront of his mind (and why should it?). Hence as he pours out his heart and soul, I can't help but feel on the outside looking in and no matter how hard I search I just can't change that. More music based than some of his releases, there are some real, if short, insights into the motivations of Marcus Singletary on Spiritual Dialogues but in the end not even that can quite unlock the rest of what is going – at least not for this 'critic' anyway...

Track Listing
1. Critics
2. Not Fade Away / L.A. Quake
3. Radio and Records
4. Footprints
5. Push the Envelope
6. Wind and Wuthering

Added: January 28th 2018
Reviewer: Steven Reid
Score:
Related Link: Spiritual Dialogues @ Marcus Singletary
Hits: 1017
Language: english

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