Album Review: Ron Pope - Atlanta

Every so often there's a subtle break in Atlantan-made-good-in-New York singer-songwriter Ron Pope that takes his particular take on classic American songform, which reached its apex in the work of Bruce Springsteen, and pulls it back from being merely a new generation's reinvention of past glories. It is the heart and the hurt in the human that Pope seems so easily to translate into his songs of simple love and pain and the whole damn thing. It's that quality that the YouTube generation discovered in the song, A Drop In The Ocean, that made his name back in 2009, and it's all over this album, his ninth in just five years.

Becoming an internet sensation – A Drop In The Ocean is sitting at around 23-million views – hasn't moved Pope to become more 'commercial' or attempt the developing of any kind of 'celebrity' persona that would better capitalise on a potentially massive 'captive' audience. Instead, he's gone on making the kind of music that draws, as I've suggested, from classic American rock, Americana, alt.country and ballads, singing songs of ordinary people going through the simple things – love, loss, death and taxes, if you will. A Wedding In Connecticut, for instance, is a tale of various lives – young lovers grow old together, the parents facing the disappointments of life and a working Joe husband who finds he's out of work and chooses life rather than a bullet. It could be Steinbeck you're hearing; it's certainly not Bukowski – too much hope.

Just why the major label that signed him and then lost him so quickly didn't know what to with this remarkably talented and obviously prolific songwriter must remain one of those American music industry mysteries some ambitious new-media PhD student is bound to turn into a hefty (online) thesis in years to come. The bonus for us is that his talent remains unchecked by market forces, and his obvious good sense means that, as prolific as he is, the result is always never less than quality work that is, at best, inspired.