Nathan Maxwell – Happiness In Time
“You begin by leaving” is how this current New Yorker and former Virginian begins his follow-up to last year’s debut EP, Undone. “I must have understood wrong,” he drawls, rubbing his eyes and coming to. “Morning comes, the difference is you’re gone.” Drums pound him on the head, the guitar stabs at him mercilessly, and backup singer Lady Bianca echoes his every word — he can’t get that girl’s voice out of his head.
Nathan Maxwell has a thin tenor with not a lot of lung power behind it, which perhaps accounts for the decision to place his vocals back in the mix. But they need to be right up there with the pedal steel and electric guitars. In the right setting, there can be something really gorgeous and affecting about a voice that’s forever yearning for some note it won’t reach but makes the leap anyway. As titles such as “Come On Girl”, “Down, But Not Out”, and “It’s You Who I’ve Come Back To Find” attest, making the leap anyway is a big bunch of what this record’s about. “I can’t be still,” he yearns in the title track. “I’ve got to find happiness in time.”
The record is filled with the right settings, underscoring Maxwell’s points with agreeably sloppy and mostly piano-driven arrangements that have the emotional oomph and wonder of, say, Ron Wood moaning “Mystifies Me”. On “Stepping Stone”, a chugging and skittering blues groove escalates to great crashing piano chords (courtesy of Lorenzo Hawkins) which help Maxwell shout that he’s had it with this girl. The closing “California Star” pursues its dreams with a ragged gravitas that recalls, just a bit, The Band doing “I Shall Be Released”. Maxwell’s voice is woozy and staggering on the track, but his band is sure, pushing him on like the wind blowing through trees and over mountaintops and up and on. Happiness surely just ahead.