Free and legal MP3 from Will Stratton (young singer/songwriter w/ gorgeous, reverb-laced tune)

"Who Will" - Will Stratton
     Gorgeous and swaying, but with a deep-down sense of gravity. (Anyone remember the old Fleetwood Mac instrumental "Albatross"? This evokes that, pleasantly.) I like the sonic interplay between the crisply strummed acoustic guitar at the front of the mix and that big dark open space underneath--space created seemingly by just a lonesome-prairie guitar and Stratton's voice, each enhanced as they are by a steady, stately reverb. The acoustic guitar offers naked immediacy, the reverbed layers lend a shadowy, contemplative air. Somewhere in the middle someone is sitting at a piano and playing a few chords every so often, adding to the engaging three-dimensionality. Later we get female harmonies, violins, even a trumpet, all of which contribute further to the song's gentle dream.
     But this song has a haunting quality that seems to be larger than the sum of its parts. In a weird way it's as if the reverb itself, independent of what's reverb-ing (the drums get it too, and the trumpet, and the female backing singers), is a visceral part of the intimate yet spacious landscape, is itself somehow its own presence in the music.
     The 22-year-old Stratton recorded his first album, What the Night Said, the summer after he graduated from high school, and it was released two years later, in 2007. Two years further on, he's out the other side of college, and along comes his second album, No Wonder, released last week on Stunning Models on Display. MP3 via the record company.