Paul Robert Burton – The Calling

CD Review by Roger Holdsworth

Paul Robert Burton is a multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, producer and sound engineer with a long and strong pedigree for work with many prominent Australian and international musicians and bands.

On The Calling, he performs his own songs alongside his arrangements of traditional songs and covers of other artists’ tunes.

There are elements of blues, celtic, gypsy, gospel, bluegrass, jazz, swing, rock and so on in both the choices and the arrangements.

The Calling is technically highly virtuosic and highly produced – but the diversity of content is, to my ears, its shortcoming.

The focus on the skills of the musician and the complexity of the sound seems to risk losing an overall coherence and commitment to the music, and this is perhaps evident in Celtic themes (merging into an Arabic theme) that drown in keyboard washes and remind me of that particular era of atmospheric ‘folk rock’.

I kept wanting something a little rougher’ perhaps, a little more ‘authentic’, and worried that the consistency of production verged into blandness.

I enjoyed some tracks and wanted to altogether skip others; there’s nothing I found objectionable but equally nothing that leapt out and grabbed me strongly.

I’m left fearing that this is, as Ross Daly once said, a case of: ‘Listen to me’, rather than ‘Listen to this’.

The Calling is a commendable production from a proficient and skilled musician, but I wonder where I’d place it within my collection.