Customer Reviews

Up Here

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is one of the best, most understated albums to come out all year. Chris Toppins backing vocals are beautiful and Bill's songwriting is in top form. A great late Saturday night album.

A long time stalwart on the Boston music scene and one of its most fervent advocates, Bill Janovitz hits the mark with his second album, Up Here. With fellow sometime Buffalo Tom-er Chris Toppin backing him up on several tracks, Janovitz mixes his acoustic sensibilities and proves that he is one of the scene's most engaging songwriters.

When you write a guitar riff that ends up helping car and sneaker sales, it's easy to get pigeon holed. Janovitz has adeptly dodged such a typcasting with this album. The music featured here is a pleasant departure from the earlier Buiffalo Tom material for which Janovitz is more well known. This effort is more folk, less country and very engaging. Essentially, the album is a smooth, easy, unified piece that flows from beginning to end. Notable tracks include the title track, "Atlantic," and my personal native New Yorker fave, "Long Island".

If you enjoy quality songwriting and good guitar work, this is a good album for you.

I have been a Buffalo Tom fan for many, many years. A year or two ago, I rekindled my interest in BT, which had been dormant since Smitten (which I considered at the time to be a sub-par effort). Needless to say, my interest was greatly renewed, culminating in my present feeling that Sleepy Eyed is one of favorite albums of all-time. What I found in this re-examination of BT's work was that the slower songs, such as Wiser, Sparklers, Sunday Night, Anything that Way, etc., are examples of superb, emotion-inducing, slow pop songwriting. This new appreciation led me to purchase "Up Here," and I have not, in the least, been disappointed. This album contains great songs by a great songwriter. In my opinion, this album is comparable in ways to Billy Bragg's "Peel Sessions": it is amazing the depth of emotion an individual can express/evoke with just a voice and a guitar (and sparse additional arrangements). Standouts: Half a Heart, Like Shadows, Minneapolis, Light in December. Conclusion: If you like BT's slower, more emotional songs (like the ones mentioned above), this album is a must buy.

I recently purchased Bill Janovitz's "Up Here" based solely on my long time fan obsession with all things Buffalo Tom and his previous solo effort "Lonesome Billy".
I have got to say that this is one of the great alt-folk albums I have heard in a long time. From the starting track all the way through to the end Bill sings soulful and insightful lyrics about life, work, memories, music, love, children and marriage. Putting the music aside there is something for every aspiring lyricist and music lover to learn and gleam from his writing - let alone his adroit and catching guitar licks and insightful additions from backing artists.
Simply said - go out and purchase this album anyway you can - you will not be dissapointed and I am sure that like me you will sit back and find this album growing on you with every subsequent spin on the CD player - something that I am also sure it will continue to do long into the future.
A must have classic.

This record is one of the best that has found its way out since the new millenium. I am partial to good songwriting and Bill's particular folk-country-alt-emotive sound. The tracks to me all over the place and take it from someone who has been there and back -it was well worth the trip.

That the stupifyingly sophmoric songwriting of Buffalo Tom's Bill whatshisname still finds an outlet onto an unsuspecting music buying public is beyond this humble listener's understanding. That said, this is an incredibly bad record.