Jeremy Fisher Goodbye Blue Monday by: Gina Marich Mon:16-Jul-07 Label: Wind Up Year: 2007 WB rating 65 out of 100

There’s been a lot of hype surrounding Vancouver based singer/songwriter Jeremy Fisher, an artist hailing from a solid tradition of working class music, where songs are kept alive in the living-rooms, kitchens and verandas of ordinary people. You can definitely hear the influence; at times his music is raw and unpolished without any pretence to grandeur, just a guy sharing a song.

But Goodbye Blue Monday is an album that has a whiff of familiarity plaguing it. You catch snippets of those Paul Simon songs your parents were so fond of and those always pleasing albums, like the Beatles’ Abbey Road, which often play on repeat in suburban book stores. While such a pedigree is an impressive thing, this been-there-before feeling mars Goodbye Blue Monday.

The album itself is undoubtedly a throwback to the 60s folk revival, albeit with a lot of modern popular hooks that demonstrate well thought out themes and Fisher’s creative spark.  The effect is like being on a kind of musical road trip, perfectly suited for hill surrounded journeys.  Listening to it conjures images of driving across a vast expanse of untouched country, the bright, cold sun stinging your eyes.

Such a setting places Fisher in the rich tradition of troubadour storytelling, lines like “The sun so high and lonely burst into flame/ I was her one and only, she was my same,” from the track ‘Jolene’ remind you there are always new ways to sing a common enough sentiment. The song itself is a mournful country ballad with strong, deep harmonies and touching lyrics, the instrumental breaks balancing each other perfectly. He sings with feeling, but sincerely and honestly without self indulgence or weepy sorrow.

Tracks like ‘Sula’ balance out the seriousness that dominates Goodbye Blue Monday.  Built on toe-tapping foundations, it is the kind of music that helps legitimise country music.

Where the album falls short, though, is on originality.  The ideas, sentiments and even Fisher’s voice, however beautiful, seem recycled and worn. The very disappointing ‘American Girls’ is an ill-placed tribute to Weezer, while ‘Lay Down’ is an unfortunate return to mid 90s power balladry.

Overall, the album is a cut ‘n’ paste of Fisher’s influences. There’s a sense that here is an artist with talent who has much more to give by fully exploring, maybe even experimenting, with his musical history. But he does this only in brief flashes; a few wonderful chords and lyrics that become lost amid too many unmemorable moments. You never get the sense that Fisher owns his music; hence Goodbye Blue Monday comes across as a cataloguing of influences, rather than an act of ingenuity.