Howie Beck - Howie Beck

The Canadian artist's last album, Hollow, was released in Europe in 2001 by the now defunct Easy!Tiger label to rapturous acclaim, most notably in the UK and Canada. Howie Beck's self-titled album will be released in February 2006.

Howie Beck introduces a new spaciousness and a remarkably surefooted, classic-pop polish to the music, but not at the expense of the whispered, 4 a.m. intimacy and naked honesty that led so many to hold Hollow so close to their damaged hearts. It's a bedroom record that has graduated beyond the typical sonic trappings of the bedroom, proving that one can write and sing - as Beck self-deprecatingly puts it - "songs about loneliness, love, death and betrayal" (and girls; Howie loves his girls) from a vivid, up-close-and-personal point of view while still aspiring to the pristine, three-dimensional audio environments that encourage listeners to sink into the material with new ears again and again.

Guest appearances by chums like Feist ("I Need Light") and Ed Harcourt ("Don't Be Afraid") and artistically adventurous forays into bossanova, waltz-time folk and gleaming New Wave pop likewise haven't compromised the disc's pronounced sense of self nor its authentic, right-here-right-now urgency.
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