DAVID VANDERVELDE Waiting For The Sunrise (Secretly Canadian) Rating: NNN
While his debut, The Moonstation House Band, strutted around like Marc Bolan in a pink feather boa, Waiting For The Sunrise inhabits the dusty old cowboy boots of a jaded rock star.
The Chicago native’s clearly still 70s-smitten (even the cover is a CSNY/Carole King rip-off, with a soft-focus Vandervelde gazing out moodily from his apartment). But the glitter and excess is replaced by AM-friendly roots rock and sultry piano ballads.
By rights, this should feel cloyingly sentimental, but Vandervelde’s musical virtuosity means it’s beguilingly exotic, particularly album opener I Will Be Fine – an insomniac’s echoey hymn to the pre-dawn hours.