EP Review: You

There are tough days and good days in all aspects of life. In music reviewing there are recording which don’t grab you and professionalism is necessary. Then there are times when you listen to an artist you’ve never heard before, you put the recording on, and practically by the first chorus you’re engaged. James Hunter’s You EP is exactly the latter.

It opens up with the title track, which begins with him sighing, then very gentle, and faultless arpeggio on an acoustic guitar. The song builds gradually and so subtlety that you hardly notice its intensity with a massive crescendo near the end.

For those like me, until I heard this EP, who haven’t heard James Hunter’s voice. I urge you, please listen. The upper register of his falsetto makes me think of boy sopranos or, in very much olden times, castrato singers (you don’t have to be a Rhodes scholar to figure out what might make a castrato singer be able to reach very high notes, it’s kind of in the word castrato). Take a minute, think about it if you need to, but make sure you’re listening to this exquisite EP while you do.

There are three other songs on the EP; Let Me Sing To You, Dear Beautiful and Dance of The Woods. All three could easily be singles as they’re stand-out songs in their own right.

Let Me Sing To You is pretty much the perfect love song, it has heart, pathos, it’s a bit a yearning, totally soppy. I love it so much. As a 50-year-old fullah with a pathological revulsion of poorly written schmaltzy clichéd crap, it’s not typically in my lexicon to say I love this love song, but there you go, this song is that song.

I don’t do 5 star reviews lightly at all, but this is a 5 and a half.

It’s like each son was the song that James Hunter had to play and record before the world ended.

An excellent sophomore EP from this song writer who is shining a bright beacon for the future of songwriting in Aotearoa.