Darden Smith: Love Calling

darden smith love calling

Videos by American Songwriter

Darden Smith
Love Calling
(Compass)
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

It’s nice to know that Austin mainstay Smith has found his soul mate and to a certain extent it’s a pleasure to hear him sing about it for the majority of songs on the appropriately titled Love Calling. His burnished, smooth vocals are perfect to relate how much he adores his better half, especially over a warm cup of cappuccino on a Sunday morning. She is his “Reason to Live,” one of the world’s “Seven Wonders,” he is constantly “Distracted” over her and she is his “Favorite Way” for the day to begin.

But a little of these puppy love sentiments go a long way and this disc is filled with a few too many that don’t boast solid enough folk/pop melodies to overcome the fairly high schlock factor. Thankfully, selections such as the reverb guitar led “Better Now” and the title track coast in on lovely, sing along choruses atop classy, almost but not quite too slick instrumental backing and production.

A handful of tunes such as the near morose “Baltimore,” where the town the song’s narrator goes to forget his lost love, and the searing “Medicine Wheel” about a jobless/homeless Indian’s fate in the big city, add heft to an album that nearly drowns in its own mushy sentiments. A bonus live cover of the Bacharach/David chestnut “I Say a Little Prayer” brings a cushy tropicalia slant to the tune but also helps further slot this as a amiable, relaxing yet relatively minor effort in Smith’s generally impressive 30 year catalog.

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