Austin Plaine

Approfondimenti

A deep sense of wanderlust imbues the self-titled debut by indie folk singer/songwriter Austin Plaine. A native of Minneapolis, the young bard takes cues from veteran Midwestern ramblers like Conor Oberst and Minnesota's favorite son, Bob Dylan, framing them within a modern folk-pop framework. A sojourn to Nashville in 2013 connected him with WeVolve Music, an artist development firm, among other things, and they helped usher his early efforts into what would eventually become this 11-song LP. Wide-eyed and earnest, Plaine uses the musical and emotional palette of the Mumford generation to tell his tales of the vagabond life and the roads taken to achieve it. Soaring harmonic choruses are hoisted atop boot-stomping strummers that feature banjo, mandolin, and piano churning together in exultant rhythms. Overall, it's a pleasant and hopeful sound, if a familiar one. Driving tales of love and inspiration like "Wait" and "Beautiful" are effective enough, but on tracks like "Hard Days" and "Houston," Plaine's tales of downtrodden Americana grit just don't feel lived-in enough to be believable. Like many on the pop end of the early-2010s indie folk movement, he uses folk as a starting point, but his acoustic toolbox is frosted with a smattering of digital effects and the type of robust sonic grandeur that will help him get played on the radio. Prior to the album's release, Plaine's big-hearted mandolin anthem "Your Love," complete with a thumping bass drum and distant Lumineers-inspired "hey" shouted rhythmically in the background, actually received a choice placement in a MasterCard commercial. While this type of innocuous contemporary fare may earn him his 15 minutes, a lasting career is built on deeper stuff. While he shows flashes of craft on his debut, Plaine may need to travel farther than Nashville to acquire the kind of hard-won world-weariness he seems to be striving for.

© Timothy Monger /TiVo