Ewen Carruthers - One Red Shoe (2009) SACD

A new album by Ewen Carruthers is a thing worth waiting for! Now it's here – they call it One Red Shoe. Seems like an old friend to us.

Melodies dance like dappled sunlight on ground covered with golden autumn leaves. October wine – that's how lyrics grow. Down-to-earth, yet reflective; almost old-fashioned, they are bound to warm the heart – taking the direct approach to the soul of the matter. And more of this slide guitar please!

A kaleidoscope of human experience; stories told by a man who uses them to come to terms with the personal and the universal in that many-splendored thing called life. Carruthers is one in a long row of artists dealing with that flaw inherent in creation that's good for pain and creativity.

Things like nearness and understanding are multidimensional, the earth may shake beneath one’s feet ("California living's great, until you start to shake".) Or that the image of a world so beautiful is marred by things like hurricane Katrina – portrayed as a raging woman flinging "Mississippi mud" without ever being able to beat life's energy out of the artists in New Orleans who create sculptures from flotsam and jetsam. Ewen Carruthers’ is an instance of this: a single red shoe on Ground Zero.

It will surely take a long of a time – or as Carruthers put it in his last album's title "until time turns around" – when things will once more be the unflawed way they were meant to be ("Shoes were meant to be a pair"). Until that time, we will make do with art – Carruthers' art does very well.