Slaid Cleaves - 'Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away'

Slaid Cleaves has long been considered one of the finest under-appreciated, under-known singer-songwriters on the contemporary folk/Americana scene. His latest effort, Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away only adds to his excellent canon of work.

Cleaves' compositions so intuitively marry music and lyrics that there's almost a cool, calming pop element at work. Of course, the folk and country influence is quite a bit more strong than that of formulaic pop, so what we're left with is a series of incredibly memorable melodies under songs that are honest and personal.

"Green Mountains and Me" (purchase/download) is one of the disc's finer tunes, with its sparse instrumentation, chugging rhythm, and tight, subtle harmonies. It's a fairly typical tune of love and longing with un-pretentious lyrics that are easy without coming off cliche - always a feat for a songwriter: "Come back my darlin / each night I pray on bended knee / won't you come back to the green mountains and me."

"Run Jolee Run" (purchase/download) delivers the blues in their most stripped-down incarnation. "Black T-Shirt" (purchase/download) is a terrific, typical Cleaves-ian observational story-song about a good girl gone bad, whose "gonna pay for the things you do / you know what you put your mama through." Without judgment or conclusion, Cleaves simply presents a character and an emotion, then leaves it open for interpretation.

Everything You Love keeps building all the way to the finish, as each song is better than the one before it. By the time it gets to "Beautiful Thing" (purchase/download), Cleaves is shaping his eagle-eyed observations around topical lyrics and hard-hitting lines like, "Put it on the television screens, I'll believe it / It's a beautiful thing." The disc closer, "Temporary" (purchase/download), though, is by far the best moment on the disc. "Behold what nature gave you," he sings. "All you see / every love and every dream / Temporary as the morning dew will turn to steam." It's a beautiful testament to life's details and a call to appreciate each moment - a wonderful end to an album that's sure to stick with you.