SWEEP OF PASSION | Doug Burr

O YE DEVESTATOR: Sometimes, in writing a music blog, there are album reviews that keep getting shelved, for lack of time and being too busy. I’ve been meaning to write about Doug Burr’s fourth official album “O Ye Devestator” for awhile now. My first introduction to the Denton, Texas artist’s music was the clear folk beauty of “Whipporwill” from his 2007 album, “On Promenade”. Burr is a passionate artist, who writes songs revealing his gentle soul, and an overflowing heart. His newest record, released in April, unfolds poetic lines that recall the sensitivity of early David Gray, the dark-drenched echoes of A.A. Bondy, the romance of William Fitzsimmons, and the rural glow of Joey Kneiser’s “The All-Night Bedroom Revival”. Here is Burr luxuriously bathing in lovelorn nostalgia in his track, “Red, Red”: “Mary, dear Mary, I drink to you / And I taste your fragrance and it goes down smooth” and then there’s this elegant verse from the melodic piano ballad, “A Black Wave Is Comin'”: “Touch your tremblin’ lips / To your pink fingertips.” He’s a singer-songwriter who treads the waters of alternative country, folk, Americana and that ghostly Southern-porch style haunted by a lingering past. “O Ye Devestator” finds Burr inhabiting a number of characters like on his song, “Chief of Police in Chicago”, a track with sweeping strings, light banjo and a decidedly Neil Young aura. But it’s not all languishing about lost and dreamy love. Burr’s title track “I Got This Fever/O Ye Devestator” gets its rock on, through guitar feedback, and melodies that trail the ups-and-downs of his voice. His songwriting is wild and effusive, describing wedding bells in “Do You Hear Wedding Bells” as “reckless and drunk in the air”. Listeners may not understand every lyric with specificity, but the songs have a universality of mood all can feel. One of the album’s best songs, “At the Public Dance”, uses a double track or delay in Burr’s voice to great effect. His crystalline vocals play beautifully against a rough strumming and scuzzy guitar fuzz. There are times when Burr goes too far into a saccharine state of mind, like Ray LaMontagne will do at times. But the vocal harmonies, and melodies seem to take you up in the gentle sway of the music anyway. Burr is a gifted songwriter that deserves a large audience to hear his songs of heartbreak, love, death, nature and passion. — David D. Robbins Jr.

Doug Burr “Red, Red”