Out of time but not yet out of Dundee is Ed Muirhead and his album “Day Job” makes a perfectly reasonable case for letting him escape to the other fine cities of this country.
Unlike most, Ed Muirhead is happy to stand out from the crowd with his naturalistic, and world weary, vocals exorcising the ghosts of many defeated pub singers in search of that breakthrough into the big time. His song writing, however, sound like the work of seasoned professional and, driven by many a piano flourish, he walks the walk and talks the talk in the style of intelligent seventies rock music.
“Daisy”, for example, has more than enough melodic maturity to draw comparison with Sir Elton John back in the days of his commercial credibility while the playful “Off The Cliff” has undoubted theatrical scalability. Even when Mr Muirhead gets the blues, he does it his way with “Cold Stares” sprinkling on a bit of New Orleans seasoning yet, oddly enough, his strongest performance comes in a his musical retake of the Robert Burns poem “Green Grow The Rashes O”. The further back in time he goes for his inspiration, the better he gets.
Whilst “Day Job” won’t shake the apples out of the trees, it is nonetheless full of character and that is something that you can’t often say today.
The album is available from Bandcamp.