Artist: Slaid Cleaves
Record Review from web archive April 29, 2009
Slaid Cleaves
There’s something sleight-of-hand-ish about Slaid Cleaves’ new CD. While thematically and even in mood, the songs reflect the album’s dour title, it’s impossible to listen to these tracks and not feel a sense of uplift and hope. Part of that optimism stems from Cleaves’ voice, a boyish, casual, slightly scuffed tenor that belies the Austin [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #64 July-Aug 2006
Slaid Cleaves – Unsung
Give Slaid Cleaves credit. Though he’s not exactly a household name himself, his primary motivation in making this album of cover songs was to bring attention to worthy but little-known artists (many of them his friends) who in some instances have yet to secure a record deal. But Unsung is not simply an act of [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #50 March-April 2004
Slaid Cleaves – Wishbones
Slaid Cleaves has never met a down-and-outer he didn’t like or couldn’t work into a song. As much as, if not more than, his last full-length CD, 2000′s Broke Down, Cleaves’ new Wishbones sets up a desperate, occasionally despairing carnival: sinners and ghosts, a fallen-from-grace boxer and an aging jockey, a divorced farmer and an [...]
Town and Country - Shorter Artist Feature from Issue #26 March-April 2000
Slaid Cleaves – Pastures of plenty of singer-songwriters
Slaid Cleaves calls his new Philo album Broke Down after its opening track, but also in tribute to his 1977 Dodge Van that carried him around the country in recent years. In a way, the van serves as a metaphor for Cleaves’ career. The Maine native moved to Austin eight years ago and has been [...]
Miked - Live Reviews from Issue #15 May-June 1998
Slaid Cleaves – Schubas (Chicago, IL)
As evidenced by this entertaining but sparsely attended show, Slaid Cleaves is a songwriter’s songwriter. For this solo acoustic gig, the Maine native interspersed covers and older material with several songs from his recent Philo/Rounder disc No Angel Knows. Cleaves opened the show with the album’s title cut and then headed into the land of [...]
Miked - Live Reviews from Issue #14 March-April 1998
Slaid Cleaves – Schubas (Chicago, IL)
As evidenced by this entertaining but sparsely attended show, Slaid Cleaves is a songwriter’s songwriter. For this solo acoustic gig, the Maine native interspersed covers and older material with several songs from his recent Philo/Rounder disc No Angel Knows. Cleaves opened the show with the album’s title cut and then headed into the land of [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #8 March-April 1997
Slaid Cleaves – No Angel Knows
The Philo debut by this Maine-to-Texas transplant benefits from the inviting warmth of Cleaves’ boyish tenor and the deft understatement of Gurf Morlix’s production, but suffers from an inconsistency of material. Too easily, Cleaves settles for folk clichés, in songs that reflect the influence of other songs more than the uniqueness of the writer’s experience [...]
Shop Amazon by clicking through this logo to support NoDepression.com. We get a percentage of every purchase you make!
