"26 Reasons" CD Review - The Beat Magazine, Melbourne By Graham Blackley - 13/7/05 26 Reasons is the second album from Australian singer-songwriter Renny Field. His debut album, Make Believe, released in December 2003, received warm reviews and he has played to appreciative audiences in Oz and overseas. Although 26 Reasons didn’t grab me immediately it is certainly a grower. Opening track Finding Solace is a well paced slice of folk pop. Gravity sports a finger clicking laid-back groove. The piano-led What More Can I Do is a lighter-held-in-the-air big ballad. The rollicking and up-tempo Showbiz would fit well into one of those classic Hollywood musicals or a glitzy Broadway stage production. Renny’s voice is at its best here as it is particularly robust and intense and he sounds like he is having a hell of a lot of fun. The dynamic Hold On is reminiscent of Coldplay. I love the poetic One More Song which Renny dedicates to “my friends at the Brass Monkey”. The pub is closing and the muso needs to say farewell yet he feels a burning desire to remain for it is through performance that he can momentarily “forget about life”. You can almost smell the spilt beer as the ache of late-night weariness is eased by the inviting warmth of the bar that has become a home-away-from-home. Now that I have enjoyed that so much it’s time to play the whole album again because as I said it really is a grower, a work rich in depths and textures that are revealed and amplified by repeated listens. |
"26 Reasons" Album Launch Review - The Vanguard, Newtown - Fri 3/6/05. By Michael Smith - Drum Media 14/6/05 ... It was obvious though that for all their intense chatter, this was very much a Renny Field audience, and he proved himself more than capable of working with them with as much deft professional ease as an artist with a decade more experience than he has accumulated to date. Field might only have been writing and performing three years or so now, but the depth of craft in his writing and skill in his performance is extraordinary. Moving between piano and guitar, either alone, with his band, or with a guest cellist, his set was the perfect mix of ballads, pop and rockers, his sense of dynamics faultless. The set also mixed in a lot more tracks from his debut album, Make Believe, than you might have expected at a launch for his second, 26 Reasons, but it all worked seamlessly, which makes picking a highlight pretty difficult. And yes, there were moments where Field's performance couldn't help but recall the pop piano players of the past, whether Peter Allen or Elton John or Billy Joel, but those moments never tipped over into cliche or excess. Its just inevitable. After all, those guys had such a big impact on the form. But theres enough indie savvy and simple openness in Field's take on the whole thing to make it his own. And this is just the beginning. |
Sun Herald Entertainment Section - Sunday 27/6/04 By Clara Iaccarino A Choice Voice With a voice like Chris Martin of Coldplay, incorporating Jeff Buckley croons and Elton John piano tinklings, Renny Field is destined to make a big splash. Anyone with a love of great vocals and guitar strummings will be equally pleased. He's a local talent on the rise. |
Renny Field – Make Believe - Album Review By Michael Smith, Drum Media. 27/01/04 A piano man not burdening his songs with too many flourishes, an acoustic guitarist who strums with quiet intensity, Sydney-based singer songwriter Renny Field certainly has the passion to develop a following among those readers who have picked up on the likes of David Gray, whom he cites as one of his influences, and as good a reference point as any for the kind of rock/pop ballad he presents on his debut album. The more traditional kind of piano man comes to the fore on the title track, matching the suitably cutting observations on the “bright young things about town” with a number of different “movements” in a sort of sub-Joel kind of way, but, as I’ve already suggested, without becoming pompous or overblown in the process, something a major label and big time studio and producer could easily do, such is the song’s potential in terms of Drama. Similarly, there’s something of the early Elton John (the best stuff) on the gently uplifting Why are you waiting and All I’ve Needed, just a voice and a piano, beautifully effective and affecting. There’s also a hint of your Coldplays in tracks like Finding Solace and Fighting Against the Wind, where Field is strumming that acoustic and delivering his lyrics with a palpable vulnerability against the spare rhythm section of brother Matt on drums and bass and electric guitar player Jason Mannell. By contrast the straightforward rock of Running Around and Man on the Stage suggests to me Field is better off developing the more plaintive aspects of his songwriting, as he does on the second half of the latter. In fact, Field tends to be most effective on this record when it’s all stripped back to just his voice and a piano, as on Why are you Waiting, or acoustic, as on the first half of Human Touch. That’s not to say he should lose the rhythm section. Rather I’m saying the songs are strong enough anyway, so maybe with a decent budget he could explore some richer sounds on his next outing, strings for instance. Either way, Make Believe is a solid introduction to a local singer songwriter with enormous potential. |
