Review of True Reflections

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Tinsley is famous for his bowmanship, of course, so it may seem obvious that True Reflections should be based around his fiddling. Somehow, this escaped Tinsley's notice. There is far less violin than on a Dave Matthews Band album (even the often-Boydless Everyday), if that may serve as a reasonable source of a comparison. Instead, the album's instrumentation is based around a parade of guest musicians, including Doyle Bramhall II, Corey Harris and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band. The performers are certainly a talented bunch, and their execution is just fine. The problem is the music, which isn't bad, it's just uninspired. It is as if Tinsley went to each musician with an idea for a song, and they then wrote and recorded the parts in the studio a few hours later. Because of the album's lack of consistency from song to song, the resulting sound is a bland, noncommittal country rock, like a more mundane Wallflowers.

Tinsley's contribution on most songs, in the absence of violin, is just that of vocals. Unfortunately, Tinsley isn't a particularly interesting singer. He's certainly not bad, but there's nothing that makes his singing any different than just about any other trained voice.

This album could be saved by some catchy riffs, fun solos, or playful lyrics. "Listen," the album's first single, is sufficiently radio friendly that it's not completely uninteresting. "True Reflections" ought to be the most engaging song on the disc by virtue of its fame, but it falls flat, with none of the energy that accompanies it in Dave Matthews Band's performance of it. "Cause It's Time" contains a lovely acoustic guitar riff that is repeated throughout, but that's only interesting if the listener is not aware that it's taken from "Lie in Our Graves" on Crash.

The best hope for salvaging this material is the possibility that some of the songs might be picked up by Dave Matthews Band and developed through performances during the summer tour. The collective talent of the band combined with the development that would result from repeated performances may be sufficient to save these songs.

True Reflections is an album without style or direction. The worst of it is that Boyd Tinsley is a talented musician who can surely do better than this. While it is admirable that Tinsley has stepped forward and and done his own thing, this is one album that may have been better left unreleased.