Danny Schmidt

Danny Schmidt

Following 2009's loosely themed exposition on money, Instead the Forest Rose To Sing, Danny Schmidt's sixth studio effort proves more personal and shaded. In the soft quiver of his lightly scuffed voice, Schmidt hearkens poignant undercurrents reminiscent of Richard Buckner's Bloomed, but with a gentler heart and optimistic eye. Even in doubt, "Ragtime Ragtime Blues" and the addiction-pained "Little White Angels" achieve compassion without sacrificing realism, and Schmidt ably works Bob Dylan's "Buckets of Rain." As inviting and enveloping as his hushed vocal tremble and deftly economic guitar work are, the former aided by Carrie Elkin and Raina Rose and the latter by Will Sexton, Man of Many Moons is also too content to lull in an easy ebb and flow when the album might have been better served by testing the songs' gravity with more daring. For better and worse, Schmidt stays in a safe orbit of his ample strengths.