Let's Just Be

Performer: Joseph Arthur
Engineer: Mathias Schneeberger; Mathias Schneeberger
Producer: Joseph Arthur; Joseph Arthur; The Lonely Astronauts
Distributor: RED Distribution

Notes: Personnel: Greg Wieczorek, Angelbert Metoyer, Rene Lopez , Kraig Jarret Johnson, Sibyl Buck, Jennifer Turner. Audio Mixer: Joseph Arthur. Recording information: Donner & Blitzen Studios, Los Angeles, CA. Photographers: Joseph Arthur; Cerise Leang. Joseph Arthur's sixth studio outing--and the first for his own Lonely Astronaut label--LET'S JUST BE finds the brooding singer-songwriter scratching every itch. From '70s boogie to brooding Skip Spence-like meditations, Arthur has very wide-ranging sonic interests and the talent to match his genre wanderlust. Most of the tracks have a loose, off-the-cuff feel that actually works to the advantage of the fairly skeletal songwriting, imbuing the simple structures with a one-take charm. Let's just be, indeed. Now that he has his own studio and label, Joseph Arthur must feel a lot of freedom when it comes to recording material, and this newfound liberation is most certainly evidenced on Let's Just Be, his second release on Lonely Astronaut. The album has the feel of an improvisational session, as if Arthur called up his band late one night, asked them to bring their instruments, showed them the sketches of 16 songs he'd been working on, and then told them to play (the occasional spoken direction of "then we go into a verse" only helps this theory along). Arthur is a talented writer, but there's an air of sloppy experimentation, of demos and B-sides and other things that probably won't interest more than the heartiest fan. There are some worthwhile tracks here -- the sad and lovely "Take Me Home," the poetic "Chicago" -- but unfortunately, these are few and far between the Mick Jagger-esque falsetto screeching, the cocky '70s-rock guitars, the repetitive lines of songs like "Shake It Off," "Diamond Ring," or "Let's Just Be." Arthur spends more of his time meandering around different riffs and rhymes (like in "Lonely Astronaut," which clocks in at 20 minutes, at least a quarter of which is an acoustic guitar layered with emerging and disappearing instruments, the word "I" sung continuously on the fourth beat). Unlike another prolific writer, Ryan Adams, who limits the accessibility of his wanderings to his website, Arthur is packaging his as a legitimate album. This may be creatively beneficial for him, and it may be a necessary part of his composition process, but for those not involved, it's less enlightening and interesting. ~ Marisa Brown

Entertainment Weekly (p.62) - "[H]e rips through swaggering homages to the Stones circa EXILE ON MAIN ST. and shifts gears with a few dark, delicate ballads..." Alternative Press (p.150) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "[A] diverse collection that often has a life force all its own..." No Depression (p.98) - "'Precious One' takes the C&W slide-guitar languor of the Rolling Stones for another spin...[and] 'Take Me Home' continues the postmodern tumbleweed drift of Beck's SEA CHANGE..."

With a softly lilting gentle whisper of a voice somewhere between Jeff Buckley and Dave Matthews, Joseph Arthur slowly but surely made a name for himself in the folk, pop, and alternative worlds in the 1990s and 2000s. His songs brimming with a melancholy sort of hope, wistful, inspirational, endlessly longing, Arthur's early work on Peter Gabriel's Real World label went barely noticed. However, by the dawn of the 21st century, the critical raves and word-of-mouth began to spread and he garnered a significant and passionate cult following.

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