Literate, heartfelt rock/pop in the classic songwriter tradition.

10 MP3 Songs
POP: Beatles-pop, ROCK: Acoustic



Details:
With content equally personal and universal, Primrose Reaper's hand-crafted sound can be mostly credited to Mike Neal's wide range of musical ability (rhythm and lead guitars, piano, keys, bass and some clunky mandolin), as well as to the studio setting itself. Reaper was furtively recorded, when time and money allowed, at the off-the-beaten-path Chicken Shack Studio in Tarzana, California. Mike spent many a moonlit night at the converted chicken coop set on an acre of land coaxing his songs to life.

Primrose Reaper offers a unique and subtle combination of styles born of the artist's wanderings and many influences. Essentially a rock/pop songwriter album, there are healthy doses of country, folk, rhythm and blues and even a mild taste of jazz, all well blended and barrel fermented. At times lyrically poetic and other times more straightforward, Neal muses on those old standards of the human condition; love and loss, as well as gain. But here and there are also vignettes of personal growth, shimmering glimpses of the arc of an honest existence, a leaving behind of the worn or out-moded and an enveloping of the new and, ultimately, hopefully, transcendent.

Born in the South and reared in suburban Detroit and therefore subject to the Motor City's one-time diverse radio stylings, he continued to soak up influences in different cities as he slowly made his way to California.

Mike Neal's natural vocals are intimate, present and real. His writing and composition, whether up-tempo or down, carries a thread of subtle beauty throughout and the songs on Primrose Reaper are comforting, familiar and yet quite unique.