REVIEW: David Gelman — Dusty Highway (LP)
2023 has been huge for alternative and indie singer/songwriters, and you needn’t look much further than David Gelman’s fourth studio album Dusty Highway to hear some of the best the year has to offer. For those who haven’t heard his music before, David Gelman brings new meaning to thoughtfulness in contemporary singer/songwriter tones inside of his work, and Dusty Highway is perhaps his most powerful work thus far.
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We start with the ebbtide of rhythm that besets every striking melody in “Lay Me Down” before oozing through the compositional anxieties of an experimental “High Road,” blistering poetry delivered by a soft lead vocal in “Time on My Hands” and joint passion found in “Stuck on Broadway,” the title track, and the cryptic “Fight My Way.” “Let it Shine” separates the singing from the slithering instrumentation only to lead us into a crisp interlude in “No Peace of Mind” that is both stirring in tone and yet quite stoic in style and although the trio of “Maybe Tomorrow,” “Once a Part of Me” and a redux in “Dusty Highway (Instrumental String Quartet)” finishes us off with more of an emotional punch than we find at the start of the LP, the finality of their sonic statements doesn’t make it any easier for us to resist playing the whole album on repeat now and again.
Beyond the lyricism that Dusty Highway has to offer all who check it out this season, the eleven songs on this record form what amounts to being one of the most engaging piano-based pieces I’ve heard in a long time. In the titular “Dusty Highway” and “Time on My Hands,” the keys have a story to tell us completely independent from the one Gelman is imparting to us from behind the mic, and though he more frequently places value on tonality over efficiency among these compositions, it works shockingly well for how black and white some of the tempos in this LP had the potential to be. The mix has a few rough edges that could have been smoothed out before dropping the album in stores, but I’m not convinced that this wasn’t intentional.
There’s an added emotional depth that comes with leaving a harmony like the one in “No Peace of Mind” unchecked and unvarnished, and while it might not win Gelman any extra airplay this summer, I don’t get the feeling that he’s the type of artist who would care. He’s involved with this medium for himself, which takes a lot more integrity than simply being out to make a buck does.
Those who live for music made by players who think outside of the box cannot afford to miss out on what David Gelman has produced in Dusty Highway, as I think that it’s one of the most poetic and inspired records of its kind from an underground artist to make waves on the national stage in the last couple of years. He’s got a momentum he needs to capitalize on while it’s hot, and I can’t wait to hear what it’s going to yield.
Colin Jordan
