MINOR GOLD – Way To The Sun (MGM)

Music for lazing in the sun, appropriately recorded in California, joined by drummer Austin Beede with producer Dan Horne on bass and pedal steel Canadian/Australian duo Tracy McNeil and Dan Parsons follow up their 2023 debut with an album very much steeped in songs of looking to find the light of life and love.

Trailing shades of a lazily funky Nilsson hanging out with Bobbie Gentry, the Southern soul title track kicks it off seeking a West Coast tan (“Don’t wanna wither like a scarecrow on a frozen crop/I wanna salty eye, California roll/Let my skin go brown, let it hold my soul”) to bring a glow back after the big city darkness. Logan McNeil adding vocal, a similar theme of seeking escape (“Dreaming of the highway inside a cul-de-sac”) informs the no less languid ‘Hair Hang Down’ (“The world I know will change on me/Falling from the branches of a dying tree/Looking over my shoulder now my grace has flown/And I feel unsteady just like a slide trombone…Trying to see the light, staring into the sun/Like making model airplanes just to smash em’ when you’re done”) captured in the repeated refrain “Mama, just wanna let my hair hang down”.

Not as it suggests a traditional folk song but certainly leaning in that SoCal direction, the steel-brushed ‘Pretty Peggy’ pursues a playing hard to get romance (“she got the far away look, seems like she don’t care/People try to wind me up and say she don’t I’m breathin’ air/Threw a penny in the wishing well, called her on the party line/Wanna tell her just how I feel but I’m running out of time”). Loss and the need to move from hometown chains on informs the easy rolling ‘Moonlight Silver Highway’ (“slowly making ground/But every day in our Father’s face/It feels like you’re still around… never gonna say goodbye/Wanna put you in my pocket and just pretend/I’m keeping you alive”).

The simply strummed ‘Leave A Light On’, Parsons singing lead and bringing S&G colours, is about trying to keep the flame burning (“I know I push my luck/Never wanna give you reason to feel/That dreams are things that turn to rust…It takes a lot of nerve just to let love in…But we’ve come so far, don’t turn back now”). With an emphasis on the Y in CSN&Y, ‘Love Is A Killer’ is, as the title suggests, about the bruises and scars a broken relationship leaves behind (“In the bottom of a drawer there’s an old sweatshirt/Smells like you, ripped and burned/Stretch it over my head til’ it covers my knees…In the middle of a dream in an empty house/There’s still a light that won’t go out/See a door wide open but I can’t walk in/I’m like a bird at the window with a broken wing”) as our heartbroken protagonist ruefully says “All this waiting on your love’s just a waste of time…If I could quit you baby and the horse you rode in on I would”, a similar helplessly hoping note struck with ‘Break It Fake It’ (“Words left hanging, strangled in the dark/Oh what might have been/Why’d you have break it, why’d you have to say it out loud?/Now we have to fake it and hide it underneath the ground”), though it might well be a murder ballad in disguise.

Its opening line about a “lighter shade of blue” returns as the title of a fingerpicked number that casts a more upbeat note (“Time can be cruel but a news day’s coming soon/And lonesome is just a lighter shade of blue/I can see the morning light/Streaming through the curtains like a moth on fire/Love is like a candy stripe/Curling ’round your heart til it gets so tight”) and “Love is like a lightning strike/It never hits the same way twice”. A welcome positivity after the previous bluesy moody and melancholic ‘Handstand’ (“Suffocating is the feeling/My throat’s on fire/A ragged Lion in a cage/Of my own design/Chasing after my lost potential/Or just a thing someone older said/Trying to catch the eye of my Mother/A handstand in the shallow end”), though that too leans into the recurring theme of making an escape (“Crashing through my windscreen/Crashing through my mind/Now we’re driving til’ the wheels burn rubber/Trying to make it out alive…Let it all hang out of the window/A dream flapping in the wind…we’ll find a way to win”).

It ends on a final love song, ‘The One Who Loves You’, though this time about loving yourself (“You got to be the star in your crown…pick up the pieces, there’s no need to hide/Set yourself free, be what you want/Nobody’s left to say that you’re not…when darkness paints over the horizon/Follow the light that leads you back home/Look to the one, bright and golden/Look to the one who’s been there all along”).

Way To The Sun’s summery musical palette might be more suited to warmer climes and its retro sensibilities attuned to those whose collection still has the likes of America, The Grateful Dead and Poco readily accessible, but, as their name indicates, there’s definite gold worth mining here.

Mike Davies

Artists’ website: www.minorgoldmusic.com

‘Way To The Sun’ – official video:

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