reviews / 2016

DYLAN LEBLANC - Cautionary Tale

Name: DYLAN LEBLANC – Cautionary Tale
Item: Cautionary Tale
Rating: 6.5
Author: Lorenzo Righetto

2016 (Single Lock)

soft-americana

by Lorenzo Righetto

6.5

Clearly, Dylan LeBlanc isn't the kind of artist you turn to for flair or spark. But for Americana played with feeling, performed and produced the way it should be, yes, he is, and this "Cautionary Tale", with its leaner, more evocative spirit, casts him in an even better light in that respect, diluting the singer-songwriter drama-queen image that clung to his early career.

The tones here are more mature, pleasantly "seasoned", as on the smoky "Easy Way Out", with its lovely choral crescendo in the style of CSN&Y, and "Cautionary Tale" thus shapes up as one of those solidly crafted records you could listen to for hours on end without tiring, without ever hitting a track or a passage that makes you wince.

It's a quality many will dismiss as secondary, as part of low artistic housekeeping, but it's not something you can say of many records these days. That's partly because Dylan, even with his sentimental but never overwrought interpretations here, has written a remarkably light-footed record, in contrast with the Louisiana singer-songwriter's past, as shown by breezy tracks in the style of Simon & Garfunkel, like "I'm Moving On" and "Man Like Me".

Few will be surprised by the melodic turns of "Cautionary Tale", but the storytelling power of the record's flowery world remains intact. It's hard, on the other hand, to feel much emotional charge, despite repeated attempts to stir one up ("Lightning And Thunder").

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19/01/2016

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Lorenzo Righetto, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition