Joshua James - Forever in Life, for Now (2021)

Willamette Mountain is the name US singer-songwriter Joshua James gives to his home in Utah, where he keeps goats and chickens and grows his own vegetables, a close-to-the-land existence that affords him ample opportunity to contemplate the cycles of life and death. Which he does, on his third album, with an earnestness that often comes across as maudlin. He sings of dying alone, of not believing in much, and of a darkness inside his heart, all in a voice that dips, rasps and soars much the way Marcus Mumford's does. To temper the melancholy, the music offers sentimentality, in the syrupy 1950s romance that oozes across Surrender's waltzing piano or the title track's country chords. Now and again James startles you with a different sound, something more reminiscent of Elliott Smith.