Freedy Johnston: Right Between The Promises : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

On his fourth album since 1992's acclaimed Can You Fly, Freedy Johnston remains not the sort of singer-songwriter to investigate reggae drifts or loud guitars or grinning duets with flashy pop singers. He just sings his modestly fluid, sweet-toned tunes in a voice to match; it's as if he's trying to reinvent folk music at a time when even singer-songwriters who long to perform unaccompanied in wheat fields still get hung up in recording studios. The highlight here is "That's Alright With Me," a richly organic-sounding love tune sung by a store worker intrigued by a girl who's always threatening to leave town. Occasionally, as with the coursing "Anyone," Johnston allows a limber rock groove. But more often, he's like the guy in "Arriving on a Train": slyly taking notice of the weather, trying to figure out something complicated, nonplused by what's going on around him but characteristically, constitutionally composed.

JAMES HUNTER
(RS 877 - September 13, 2001)