Search - Gary Hirstius :: Waterline

Un-equalled southern tinged fresh, chunky, juicy and soulful

Louise Dontigny | Ottawa, Ont CANADA | 10/16/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"All of Gary Hirstius' cd's are superb; this one is no exception. New Orleans tinged roots-rock. A variety of styles from hook-filled rockers to R&B to soulful sing-alongs to smooth ballads. Timeless well-written reflective, introspective songs, hauntingly beautiful melodies, outstanding rough and vibrant voice, professional sound. Gary Hirstius is a brilliant musician, an exceptional artist. You will find yourself on a roller-coaster ride of emotions and humming formerly unfamiliar songs; "The Sun's Gonna Shine (Time's Up)", and "I Won't Forget", "Dark Eyed Lily" on this cd are some of my favourites and ones I found myself humming.



In Spring of 2008, I bought all four of Gary's cd's and I absolute love listening to them; they are my favourite roots-rock cd's. For a whole year, whenever I went to put music on, I would always reach for Gary's cd's first. I still play them regularly; I never get tired of listening them. Everything he does is excellent and I love it all, even the songs that have a country flavour to them; a genre I don't usually care for except for a few artists, but his songs are so good, I enjoy them all tremendously. His rendition of Neil Young's "Losing Eng", with Teresa Anderson singing along, is reminiscent of early country music and a real gem (this is on the Down River cd). Other favourite songs of mine are "Temporary Secret", the title song of that cd (he does a more up-beat tempo version of this song on the Slightly Out Of Focus cd as well; both versions are great), and "Heatbeat Away" (on both of these cd's as well).



I don't usually do cd reviews but I just had to do one for Gary's cds because there weren't any here and I didn't find much elsewhere either. Gotta spread this good stuff around!

"