In my life as a reviewer at Rambles.NET (two decades as of this year) and elsewhere, I am exposed to a lot of music I would never have heard, or heard of, otherwise. Early on, I figured out that I had to treat recordings on their own merits; the criterion had to be whether they succeeded at what they intended, not whether they represented a genre I prefer playing in my vicinity. Mostly, I've dealt with the issue by writing about approaches -- folk, blues, honkytonk, rockabilly, bluegrass, jazz -- that have filled my listening life for decades and still, at their best, reliably supply happiness and satisfaction. That means that if I hear an album fitting one of those categories yet doing little or nothing for me, I feel assured in my judgment when I fail to praise it.

Chris Pierce's Let All Who Will is the latest from a veteran Los Angeles singer-songwriter who is starting to garner wider attention. As I write, he's opening for Neil Young, which I'm sure marks a welcome career advance for him. It is, at the least, a nod from one of rock's most estimable figures.

Pierce's new album highlights a unique personality who separates himself from the herd by fashioning an unexpected stylistic fusion, perhaps a distant echo of the late, forgotten Ted Hawkins. Usually, it starts with acoustic guitar and goes on to gather choruses and pop-soul sweetening, lighter than air elements out of Motown and related production formulas. There are also various doses of Billy Joel, for one example in the opening cut "Batten Down the Hatches." I checked the composer credits thinking this might actually be a Billy Joel cover, only to learn it's a Pierce creation.

Honesty compels me to confess that I haven't listened to pop music -- except as a member of a captive audience at a bar or in the produce section of the supermarket -- for a very long time. I don't recall ever deciding that I hated pop; it was just a slow-moving process that began in my early adult life with a dawning realization that other genres, ones I'd have to search out on my own, spoke to me far more deeply than did music molded and marketed for the masses.

I like to think I recognize good music wherever it comes from, and Pierce is easy to respect and admire. More like a folk-protest song than anything else, the true story of a horrific racial crime "Tulsa Town" (written with Mark Malone) broadcasts beauty, power and heartbreak, as does "Sidney Poitier" (also with Malone), about the last days of the pioneering Black actor. Relationship songs, on the other hand, feel rather generic to my ears -- not unlistenable but not wildly interesting, either. It depends, I suppose, upon what your tastes are and what you expect in a song.

One way or another, I expect the pop mainstream will be taking notice. It's certainly made less worthy choices.

[ visit Chris Pierce's website ]