You know those albums that just keep stealing over you, more and more the longer you keep listening to them? Well, I think Golden Hour might be one of those. At first I thought it was just kind of nice, nothing special, but as the days have stretched on I've found myself keeping on listening to it and discovering its many aptnesses - the way album opener "Slow Burn" is what its title promises, no unnecessary grandiosity but instead an unforced opening out, the exactness and simplicity with which one-of-several-highlights "Happy and Sad" earns its title, and of course the way the whole thing is, indeed, golden.
I remember thinking there was something nicely modest about Pageant Material, and the same quality shows up here - a trust in the material and the listener's ability to appreciate it without any trickery or flourishes. True, this sort of country/pop/adult-contemporaryish is right in my lane - at different points, this album has made me think of golden period Sheryl Crow, likewise Natalie Imbruglia, and even latter-day Taylor Swift - but, like all of those, there's enough in the way of surprises, individuality and real feeling to avoid descending into undifferentiated smoothness (the most impressive thing about, say, the way banjos and vocoder voice effects come together in "Oh, What A World" is that it's all in service of a melody that goes directly down the spine).
I remember thinking there was something nicely modest about Pageant Material, and the same quality shows up here - a trust in the material and the listener's ability to appreciate it without any trickery or flourishes. True, this sort of country/pop/adult-contemporaryish is right in my lane - at different points, this album has made me think of golden period Sheryl Crow, likewise Natalie Imbruglia, and even latter-day Taylor Swift - but, like all of those, there's enough in the way of surprises, individuality and real feeling to avoid descending into undifferentiated smoothness (the most impressive thing about, say, the way banjos and vocoder voice effects come together in "Oh, What A World" is that it's all in service of a melody that goes directly down the spine).
