Deaf Joe’s oeuvre is a likeable, often lovely sort of folksy blues. The songs are soothing, reflective rambles and it’s all well-crafted and put together with care.
The arrangements are marked by an insistent finger-picked or strummed acoustic guitar, embellished with piano melodies, wafts of stray electronica, general background noise, lightly dissonant post-rock guitars, sporadic reed instruments, glockenspiels and occasional backing vocals.
There’s a clear style here, and yet, I’m not sure it’s a record that fully knows what it’s about. Symptomatic of this all of the elements are equally prominent in the mix and vying with the vocal for attention. For the listener and, I suspect, for Deaf Joe himself if he’s to realise his potential fully, the focus should be on the vocal. Now, this often happens when producers are being overly meticulous. But whether your recording is of a lo-fi or hi-fi variety – there’s a need for a hierarchy of attention. Without it, listening can get a bit oppressive.
In this instance, while Joe’s vocal is soulful and textured it’s hard to get the full measure of it when it’s battling against an equally insistent arrangement (the acoustic guitar, in particular, should really be dialled down). As a result, it takes the massed vocals on ‘Burrowing’ and the piano-led ‘Joanna’ to reinforce the melody and push the point home that these are good songs. This is a talented songwriter, singer and musician but this is not his masterpiece.