Review: Kevin Seconds “Heavens Near Wherever You Are”

Kevin Seconds
“Heavens Near Wherever You Are”
(Headhunter / Cargo Music)

Commanding a soft moan and charm of a humble songwriter putting together his own little gems of observation, Kevin likes the sonic blend of acoustic balanced against slight distorted guitars.  With spurts of female backing vocals to lend an ever-warmer melody to an already bright direction.  The tempos are generally pretty peppy so this stripped down indie rock, or maybe goosed up coffee house jam keeps moving.  When the two vocals blend against the clean clipped guitars, there’s an Eric’s Trip subtlety, but never as noisy.  There’s an almost country bounce to the drum shuffle in, “Weather Everything” and I bet there’s a Johnny Cash album in Kevin’s library somewhere.  While each song has enough of its own identity, Kevin could do well to break up the range of his singular sound as these tracks suffer from that ‘it all blends together’ syndrome.  But the genuine sincerity of which these songs are delivered is a tangible element that makes it hard to dismiss this as just another guy and his guitar.  According to his bio, this is the outlet he sees in his future when he gets to old to front the punk band he’s most well known for (7 Seconds).  The songwriting ability is there but would be more viable if he took more chances with instrumentation.  But for the pleasant distraction this is, “Heavens Near Wherever You Are” does have a singular charm.