Donavon Frankenreiter picked up his first surfboard several years before he bought his first guitar, so with each album he records, the odds of dramatic departures are pretty low.
Glow is no different. Recorded over a couple of days in California, it has the same sunny melodies, acoustic feel, laid-back rhythms, and scratchy but sincere vocals of his previous work. It also retains the songwriting-by-collaboration introduced on 2008's
Pass It Around, including several songs with new producer
Mark Weinberg (including "Glow," the title track and first single) plus a coterie of friends and well-wishers:
Grant Lee Phillips on "All Right,"
Gary Jules on "Dance Like Nobody's Watching," and
Matt Nathanson on "Glow." There's little of the Hawaiian flair of
Revisited, just an occasional ukulele heard in the background and no slack-key guitar.
Frankenreiter does little here that sounds wrong, reassuring listeners that "everything will be all right" on a song that's titled, naturally, "All Right." ~ John Bush