John Gorka was one of the leading lights in the 80s New Folk movement that directly influenced most of the US singer/songwriters we carry, and his own output since then has been uniformly strong – so this follow up to his excellent 2001 release ‘The Company You Keep’ is both significant and eagerly anticipated.
He posses one of the most striking voices around, his rich expressive baritone is instantly identifiable and immediately likeable – the delivery is smooth and effortless and it works equally well with both acoustic and more instrumentally rich songs. His vocals sound great with female accompaniment, and he often utilises strong harmony singers on his discs – here the main artists are Lucy Kaplansky and Alice Peacock who between them provide significant contributions to 5 of the songs.
As with all his discs the lyrics are excellent, ranging from philosophical to confessional with occasional elements of humour – he’s not pioneering new lyrical ground, but as an example of consistent quality there are few albums that could match the 14 songs here, it really is strong throughout and these are all pieces that are open to deeper analysis over prolonged listens.
There’s a gentle acoustic groove running through the disc, and most of the songs have bass, keyboards and percussion in addition to Gorka’s acoustic guitar, and this gives the album a distinct sound and flow that makes it easy to listen to from the first play.
Amongst the highlights are ‘Poor Side’, a stunning (but fairly gloomy) lyrical piece, and ‘Look the Other Way’, which has a strong melody, great hooks and excellent harmony vocals from Alice Peacock, it’s an obvious radio track.
‘Old Futures Gone’ is very easy to enjoy on first listen, but with musical and lyrical depth at every turn - a very fine contemporary folk singer/songwriter album.

£13.49