A softly plucked, as well as softly delivered lyric of “Guard,” opens Stan Snow’s Into the Great Beyond. The dozen here, from this singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, producer, engineer and filmmaker and member of The Sundogs, are full of good production, solid songwriting, sly playing and some thought-provoking lyrics.
Up and funky on the next tune, “Chemical Fallacy,” Abe Laboriel Jr’s drums, and Javier Gonzalez round out the white funk. It’s a very cool tune, where the fun of the music slithers around a lyric really saying something.
“Fight,” is another upbeat rocker (I tend more towards liking the one’s that move along here at a medium tempo than Snow’s more introspective acoustic moments). Same is true with the flicky funk of “Insanity Repeats,” and its roiling guitar picking…very cool stuff. The lyric might be slightly banal, but the point comes across.
The title track has a cool plucked guitar and might be the most mature lyric for me here. Valerie Pinkston’s backing vocals help a lot to add color to Snow’s limited vocal prowess. He is a smart man putting in harmonies and backing vocals just where they should be.
I love the mix of those harmonies, strings and mandolin on “Jungle.” Once again, Snow might overstay his welcome a bit here–he tends to say what he needs to before he gets to the end of a good many of the tunes–but this song is another highlight on album with lots of them.
The entire concoction ends with “Seasons” (a “Jungle AltMix” is actually the last tune but I’m not counting that with the original tunes). It’s another song showing of Snows fine guitar playing and this group of expert players he uses so well.
You can buy Stan Snow’s Into the Great Beyond here: Into the Great Beyond | Stan Snow (bandcamp.com)
