Album Review: "Crucible" by Drew Worthley

Crucible

I received an email that simply said he needed an address to send off a review copy of his upcoming album.

OK.

That's all I knew really. It could have been anything. The title is Crucible, which is very metal. It's the type of pot they used to burn witches in and the name of an old thrash metal band from St. Louis whose indie cassette tape I recently found in an old box of stuff.

Well, Drew Worthley is not metal in the slightest.

The East Londoner plays well, a sort of retro pop made new again. I will get more into that as we go on. He's on the cusp of releasing his second album independently and was good though to think of me

Drew Worthley

Worthley sang, wrote, and played a very large amount of this record, and that's a very good thing, because it's his  name on the cover.

The album is a journey through, what seems to me, a weekend. Though conveying hope, it felt like there was a sense of regret, but listen to me...

Trying to give you the images I inferred...

This would make a great soundtrack to a noir film that takes place over a short period of time though.

The music is bouncy, happy, sorrowful, hopeful, and all other sorts of fulls. There's no singular instrument, though keyboards and synths dominate much of the space.

The music is always happy and upbeat, but the vocals are soft and often melancholy as if looking for the reason to fight on.

The juxtaposition of happy music and vocals singing about harder topics makes the album all the more powerful.

Though this album's genesis is rooted strictly in the Era of Reaganomics, the songs are fresh and new.

Release: 9/24/15
Genre: Pop
Label: DIY
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