Timothy Cameron – Every Cloud Has A Sulphur Lining

Timothy Cameron – Every Cloud Has A Sulphur Lining / 2004 Self / 7 Tracks / http://www.folkpunk.com / Reviewed 22 January 2005

This isn’t folk-punk as much as it is protest music, which has its roots not in the seventies, but rather in the earlier twentieth century, with people like Phil Ochs, Woody and Arlo Guthrie. Now, there is a whole new wave of this tradition coming to fruition, with the now-deceased Joe Strummer, Mike Park, Jeff Ott, and Steve Towson. I usually can’t stand the person with acoustic that is always found around frat parties and coffee shops, but Timothy is able to keepo some perspective in eir music, something that I can really get into. Instead of thinking that what they do is the best thing to come out – a fault that individuals that follow in the tradition of hacks like Dave Matthews, John Maher, and Jack Johnson so often have – Timothy is just a conduit for information. The guitar lines and minor accompaniment with drums are just a little added benefit – a little sugar to help the medicine go down.

The laid-back nature of Timothy’s voice belies some of the information that ey puts in each and every song on “Every Cloud Has A Sulphur Lining”, and while I can see the purpose in this mask, I would rather like to hear something a little harder edged, something more like the acoustic Against Me! tracks. What is impressive about Cameron’s work on this disc is that most of the tracks on “Lining”, according to the liner notes, were captured in “one or two takes”. Everything sounds so lush, even if the amount of instruments used can be counted (nearly) on thumbs, and to be so confident in one’s music and talented with one’s hand says a lot for the individual behind the disc. Breaking out the harmonica for “The Place I Leave Behind”, the only thing that begins to insinuate itself as a possible problem is the cohesion that the disc as a whole has – there is just not much different in the arrangement found here.

Hints of Warren Zevon can be heard at time, with some of the same wit that the late singer-songwriter was so successful with. Take lyrics from a track like “Bread & Circuses” – “Now Gretzky's bigger than Jesus Christ, In our complacent little paradise.” Aside from the slightly-stagnant acoustic arrangement and the genre misnomer (two minor issues), Timothy is well on eir way to becoming one of the better purveyors of this protest tradition.

Top Track: “Video Video”

Rating : 6.6/10