Stephen Morris Edgerton – “Open Road Love Song” / “Pinstripe Blue”
Stephen Morris Edgerton – “Open Road Love Song” / “Pinstripe Blue” – Singles Review
Alrighty…looks like we’ve got tunes written by Stephen Morris Edgerton in the mix today.
If you were to ask me what I thought about this dude’s tunes based on a first impression from listening to “Open Road Love Song,” which it appears that someone must have, I feel like I’d be able to give you a pretty positive response. If you’ve been reading these pages of ours for as long as I’ve been writing on’em, you know that my…hmm…let’s say tangents, and/or rants, on the topic of songwriters has been varied to say the least over the years. So let me set the record straight right off the drop here – they can be a crucial part of the musical ecosystem, and I’d be the first to say I support them in that regard. Not everyone out there can write a song, and not everyone out there can sing or play one either – we all have different strengths & different needs, and there’s no reason that a songwriter can’t be an important piece of the puzzle that could potentially help someone else solve their own. Where I tend to struggle with dedicated songwriters who draw the line at the writing and that’s it, is that we can usually feel some kind of disconnect between the intentions and the final results, you know what I mean? It’s not only tough to write a song for someone else to sing the way someone else would have envisioned it, but it’s just as tough to sing a song that someone else has written without a full understanding of what it would take to perform it. Compromise is usually the key element to making songwriting work in the finished product we hear when it does…a little bit of give & take and seeing things from both sides of the coin. Maybe an extra word is needed to make the metering work…maybe a singer needs to expand a couple notes to fill in for that extra syllable…it becomes a relationship built on really working together.
Anyhow. I ain’t gonna lie to ya, all I know about Stephen Morris Edgerton is the man’s name and these songs I’ve got here. I don’t know the methods being employed, or who the folks are playing this or singing that. What I can tell you is that, again, I like what I hear in a tune like “Open Road Love Song.” As somewhat of a writer myself (I think I can claim to be close after more than two decades, maybe?), I appreciate things like carefully selected words…uniqueness in the imagery we describe and/or the themes that we choose to write about…the CRAFT itself on display, everyone following me? All of these areas are where a tune like “Open Road Love Song” really succeeds, in my opinion. Of course the concept of the open road is something that’s been examined in a variety of ways throughout the course of history, but where Stephen excels is in the writing and how he describes his attraction to what it offers. Lines like “you are a silence that tastes good to me” is a great way to create a sensory feeling that our ears can understand. “For silken pleasures I have not known” is another extraordinarily poetic line that stands out too. “Crystal clear are your ways as I leave this city haze” works perfectly too – it’s an excellent way of communicating the clarity we experience when we leave behind our distractions. There are lots of stellar examples of great writing at work in a tune like “Open Road Love Song,” and that regular disconnect that tends to creep up between an author and an artist doesn’t seem to be a factor here. So either Stephen and the singer discussed all those important details prior to recording this song and ironed them out, or credit where credit is due, Edgerton naturally knows his way around a tune. To be honest, either scenario is acceptable – at the end of the day people just want something they can listen to that doesn’t sound forced, and “Open Road Love Song” doesn’t feel that way at all. I feel like the singer got right to the heart of the emotion that Edgerton had written into this song and gave the performance the right combination of weary wisdom & respectful appreciation the words called out for.
So for myself personally, “Open Road Love Song” is the stronger of the two songs I’ve got here by a fair margin in terms of the writing itself. “Pinstripe Blue” still has plenty to offer ya though, don’t get me wrong…in fact, I think there’s very much of an argument that could be made that it ends up sounding a lot like acoustic tracks by the Foo Fighters…so if you’re looking for something relevant to what’s out there today, you might even say that “Pinstripe Blue” has more of a widespread, universal appeal to it. Beyond that…I mean…look – it’s damn near impossible to reinvent the love-song at this point in time, and though I feel like Edgerton has done a solid job of describing the feeling from his “point of view” in many ways, he’s still writing within a subject that’s been written about millions if not billions of times before. Don’t get it twisted, I like love-songs too – who doesn’t? We all do. But I can like them and still acknowledge they’re a topic that we all kind of fall back on, and that there are so many other things we can write about that would easily be perceived as more unique. I also feel like there’s an interesting choice of lines in the main hook of the chorus in “Pinstripe Blue” as well – “true love comes so quickly, this is my point of view, and I feel that in time this love will bloom.” I’m not entirely saying that true love coming quickly and that later on down the road it’ll bloom are things that are somewhat at odds with each other, but kinda? My first time listening to “Pinstripe Blue” I felt like I was immediately asking myself, well, which is it? Does true love immediately establish itself and reveal itself in full? Mine did! I’m somewhat inclined to feel that’s how it works after being with my wife for nearly twenty years now and getting married pretty quickly, because we knew. Did that love still bloom and blossom from there forward? I guess I can’t dispute that it did somewhat, sure – but like I said, this is why these lines feel like they’re not entirely at odds with each other, but still a bit of a strange fit too. All-in-all, it’s written with a very…hmm…let’s say wholesome attitude and old-school approach to love, but I’d still advocate on behalf of that being fairly timeless. I like the delicate melody on the guitar that comes along with this song…I appreciate the sentiment…and yes, I’d even be the first to tell ya that the majority of listeners out there would probably enjoy this track more than “Open Road Love Song” as well I suppose. That’s why love-songs continue to be written about by everyone you listen to…because we can all dream along with what we hear and relate to it. Edgerton proves he can write tunes with both of these tracks, and that he can source out the right talent to get them recorded effectively as well. There’s probably still some room for the man to evolve in terms of what will get his songs to stand out from the rest that are out there, but that can largely be said of most. What I like is that he’s clearly putting his heart and a whole lot of sincere thought into his words – in the music I choose to listen to, these are key ingredients.
Find more music by Stephen Morris Edgerton at his official page at Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/stephenedgerton-1
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