CD review-David Mead

by Sheri Boggs


Sometimes there's a crazy serendipity that happens when we wait until the last possible moment to write the CD review every week. What usually happens is that we end up ransacking the big stack of promotional materials like an editorial grizzly, looking for something -- anything -- to write about. It doesn't happen all that often but every now and then we hit pay dirt, finding the one CD we've been looking for all our lives, or at least for a few months now.


David Mead's Mine and Yours is just such an opportunity of reviewing kismet. Thirteen songs about love -- either finding it, hanging on to it, or watching it slip out the door -- comprise this surprisingly complex album. It's easy to make love songs sound trite, but in Mead's hands, they're individually polished gems.


While he most often falls under the "folk" umbrella, Mead's style is more like that of the '70s singer/songwriter. Garnering comparisons to Paul Simon, Paul McCartney, and James Taylor of that era, Mead these days is most often likened to David Gray and Elliott Smith. The line "we're talking trash again like long sedated lovers" on "Comfort" is particularly nice, as is the funny "Where are all my beautiful friends/Toasting off my beautiful week" on "Venus Again." The most delightful track would have to be"Girl on the Roof," which borrows its blithe spirit from the Beatles' "ObLaDi, ObLaDa."