Scott Fab - Someday Soon Somehow (Click to watch the video)

9 May 2020

The tell tale test of a song’s greatness is stripping it down. Like exposing the “bones” of a house, tearing away the accents of a full band, and removing the slick excesses of sophisticated production, leaves the listener with the bare elements of a songwriter’s craft. If the songwriter can survive that inspection – or even flourish under those merciless lights – the quality and efficacy are beyond dispute.

Scott Fab, a singer/songwriter, from Royal Oak, Michigan recorded his new record, Someday Soon Somehow, in a single take, live in the studio, with the sole accompaniment of his 1943 Gibson guitar. The swift collection of nine songs has a running time under 40 minutes, but despite its brevity, combines touches of beauty, profundity, tenderness, and honesty with a gentle hand and graceful heart.

The guitar is simple, and yet tender, while Fab’s voice is modest, but rich. Fab’s vocal and guitar coalesce to form the evocative minimalist delivery of an Ernest Hemingway short story. Left with nothing but blood on the page, or in this case – the air – the listener has no choice but fall under its emotive and hypnotic spell.

Also similar to Hemingway, Fab aims for the profound while remaining close to the ground. “Broken Branch” is a moving dissection of how people carry the tools of their own triumph and destruction through reflections on one family tree. “Fancy Clothes” captures the joy and hope of a wedding party, and through a simple distillation of that familiar scene, Fab is able to trace the hints of melancholy that pepper even are most serene memories.

“Let’s dance like our younger bodies / Laugh like lovers do / We’ll have the times of our lives like we used to do…” Fab sings on “The Time of Our Lives.” There is more to the song than nostalgia. Too complex and deep a songwriter to settle on one feeling, Fab adds the following during the bridge – “How are we to know? / Too young to regret / If I could do it all again / I’d take it all back.”

Fab welcomes all of the beautiful and brutal contradictions of the human experience into his compositional architecture. The experience Someday Soon Somehow is as inspiring as it is entertaining. It is also a reminder of the pristine power of one extraordinarily gifted songwriter, alone with his songs.

With nothing more than his old guitar in a quiet room, Fab proves that he can pass the ultimate musical test.  

David Masciotra (www.davidmasciotra.com) is the author of four books, including Barack Obama: Invisible Man (Eyewear Publishing, 2017) and Mellencamp: American Troubadour (University Press of Kentucky, 2015).

To read all of David's reviews, click here 

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