Salim Nourallah - Constellation

1. Endless Dream Days
2. Western Hills
3. Stranger In My Own Skin
4. Be Here Now
5. In The Blink Of An Eye
6. It's Not Enough
7. Don't Mind Me
8. The Wrong Road
9. Pictures Collected
10. The Man Who Learned To Love
11. Love Is All Around
12. Saint Georges
13. Home

Over the last few years, Salim Nourallah has probably become my favorite unknown artist (and I largely use the unknown there to make a point, not so much to qualify). His three-album run of solo records was an impressive streak, but when I talked to him after his previous release Snowing in My Heart, he explained that he was done with that era, that he had finished what amounted to a trilogy of sorts post and would be moving on, both thematically and musically.

It’s an interesting move, because he’s moving both forward and backwards. In abandoning the numbers of musicians and big approach to his last record, he’s stripped down to the two-man act he described in that interview (the other man in this case being Billy Harvey, who produced the record, despite Nourallah’s success as a producer, including his work with the Old 97’s). The move to a two-artist act is reminiscent of his early days, recording with brother Faris in the Nourallah Brothers.

Nourallah says this record reminds him of that sound, which means he’s jumping back several records’ worth of material to do something new. But it works. For one thing, it doesn’t sound as much like the NB recordings as he suggests. There’s a certain return to the power-pop sound of the early stuff, but it keeps the more reflective aura of the past three discs. Nourallah and Harvey might play a little less with texture than on a record like Snowing, but there’s no sacrifice of artistry. It’s a smaller affair in a way, but it sounds like a pop band making a classic pop album.

I always start to tell people that Nourallah reminds me of McCartney as a songwriter, and then end up saying he’s more like Costello. In reality, though, Ray Davies is probably the best comparison, maybe moreso here than ever before (at some point I should do a real examination of the line from the Kinks’ “Picture Book” through Nourallah’s Polaroid and this album’s “Pictures Collected”). Thematically, Nourallah maintains an interest in the past (see cuts like “Western Hills” and “Stranger in My Own Skin”), but he does so in a way that’s less nostalgic and more about usability, recognizing the way that awkwardness in the past may have led to a not unrewarding life. He’s reaching back to his younger years for sound and for setting, but he’s doing it as an introspective (but not evasive) adult. These songs are straightforward and emotional without being maudlin, and generally honest without necessarily being confessional.

In the end, it’s a little hard to know exactly what to do with this album. There’s a clear shift in sound from his previous three, and it doesn’t exactly match is past work, and yet it’s very much a Salim Nourallah record, and should please any current fans (and still provide a good entry point for curious listeners). It’s sort of a transition record, but without the fumbling and without a radical departure, as they say. I don’t know that it’s his best, though that says as much about the consistency of his output as it does the quality of this release. I’d call it something like “yet another strong entry from the best songwriter you’re not listening to,” but, true as it is, that statement seems to sell it just a little short. I’m a little puzzled, but I don’t mind...