NICK NORTON- SENTIMENTALIST

At his best, Nick Norton sounds a little like Michael Franti in the acoustic Songs From the Porch kind of way. But I don’t think Norton wants to save the planet. Because at worst, he sounds like a Dad hanging onto his youth. He probably isn’t even that old, but his album has a middle-class sound to it, and that ages him. His jazz-soul-funk tracks are enjoyable and he tells me he’s got the blues, but he seems like a good man and we all know good men don’t really have the blues. They have, like he says in Option Urge, “balance and grace… Just like anyone alive, I reside on the upside.”  Where is the Soul is a cool little track which would play well live, especially the instrumental solos with Nick on bongos. With lines such as “Where’s the soul that I’m needing / Where’s something to kill tedium”, they’ll appeal to the comfortably bored middle-class ex-hippies of yesteryear. I imagine him playing at Marble Bar below the Hilton Hotel, which is a larger feat than any other middle-aged Dad’s garage band could ever hope for.

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