There are very specific music memories I have in my repertoire, memories held near and dear to my heart: seeing Beck in a small club in San Jose to comfortable crowd of a 100 people or so, a double bill with Soul Coughing and Jeff Buckley, Stone Temple Pilot’s secret acoustic show at the Fillmore, and in 1995 when I had gotten early to a show and was blown away by one guy and a guitar, Peter Stuart, who did a solo acoustic set aside from his band Dog’s Eye View. Everyone, including myself, literally ran to the merch table after the show to grab his CD, and the laggers sulked away as Peter regretfully let them know he had sold of his supply.
I had that memory come rushing back to me when I heard Joshua Novak sing at the Hi-Dive for the CD release party of The 5 Day Romance. His voice is simply mesmerizing, which doesn’t always happen with acoustic driven rock. For singer/songwriters there’s no middle ground (at least for me personally). It’s either hit or miss. With the typical human’s short attention span that gets worse by the day, we typically require a lot of drums and noise going on to hold us.
Joshua seems to have mastered this ability, singing of betrayal and bitterness with an overflowing beauty, the mix of vocals and guitar weaving and cascading off the stage or the speakers. Splendor the size of Michael Penn or Peter Stuart is his calling card, and what wraps you up in his 5 Day Romance.
