Freedy Johnston: Blue Days, Black Nights : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Unlike your typical solo guitar guy, Freedy Johnston can actually sing. His plaintive, nasal voice is full of Kansas dust, and when he covers "Wichita Lineman" live, you can hear him whisper through the whine. Blue Days Black Nights is his finest bag of tunes since the 1992 cult classic Can You Fly, on which his emotional folk rock really came together. Here Johnston nicks his album title from Electric Light Orchestra's best song ever ("Telephone Line") and earns it with plush, morose ballads. Like your typical solo guitar guy, he's more convincing at sorrow than anger, so the petulance of "Changed Your Mind" strikes a bum note. But he soars in the sweet agony of "While I Wait for You" and "Pretend It's Summer," adding a bossa nova lilt to his longing for a distant lover he needs more than he wants. "It's a lonely kind of thing I do," Johnston sings, and judging from Blue Days Black Nights, he loves the work. (RS 819)

ROB SHEFFIELD