"Straight From the Heart" by Wes Finch
Review
The latest of Wes Finch's releases on Patreon, namely a song entitled "Straight From the Heart" will be available via that platform on September 25th.
It's interesting how Wes manages his wide breadth of musical interests. He doesn't go in for inflexible compartmentalisation: songs issued under one moniker often crop up in sets delivered under others, but in this case I'm minded how his The Silver Wye was originally the "experimental" end of his repertoire and how this (gratifyingly) has been so accepted by the public that it's evolved into one of his mainstream outlets & manifested live with collaborators we're used to seeing him play with under his more folk & roots persona.
To accommodate this, his Patreon channel is now his outlet for experiment: how long I wonder before these songs appear in setlists for his other bands?
As with The Silver Wye, technology plays a more prominent compositional part and he seems to explore pieces of the same to tease out their potential for telling the tales he yearns to tell.
On this occasion we are talking a Linn drum for the former and "a fictional Julie but… changed into being about a fictional Ruby. It's a guy singing to his wife of many years, maybe giving her a hug and a pep talk" for the latter.
Now Prince seems to have been an inspiration here (and you've probably heard Wes covering him). The sound is reminiscent and of course he also told a good story in song. Though one can't quite imagine him telling this particular one, much as both like expressing sympathy for their subjects.
It burbles funkily along with some agreeable upward vocal swoops and certainly is not so avant garde that I can readily imagine Wes reproducing this in company with Ben Haines and Matt Lakey and their boxes of tricks. If you write good songs then it scarcely matters the clothes you opt to dress them in: in fact variety of approaches helps ensure that your past glories do not become devalued by stylistic repetition.
