British singer/songwriter
Bobby Long came to recognition when his friend Robert Pattinson sang his song "Let Me Sign" (co-written with
Marcus Foster) on the soundtrack to the popular vampire film Twilight in 2008. A Winter Tale, his debut studio album for ATO Records, demonstrates that he has spent a lot of time listening to early albums by
Bob Dylan,
Leonard Cohen, and
Johnny Cash, having learned the chords and fingerpicking he employs on his guitar, some harmonica playing, and, particularly, his poetic lyric-writing style. His husky singing voice also sounds a bit like the young
Dylan, or perhaps more like a less arch
Tom Petty. His lyrics have a stream-of-conscious style, revealing a poetic persona at the heart of his songs, and it's the lonely hero that appears most often, a person who is romantic himself even if he seems unable to be romantic with a potential loved one at whom the songs are directed. "I'm crazy to love," he declares in "A Passing Tale," "and I'm crazy to die/I'm lost in this world, and I don't know why." In "Two Years Old," while the music may suggest
Johnny Cash, the words suggest Wilfred Owen, the World War I-era British poet who died in the trenches, but not before capturing the loss of innocence -- and of life -- suffered in a harsh conflict. At such a moment, it's clear
Long isn't just a young man playing with words. ~ William Ruhlman