Ruarri Joseph - Shoulder to the Wheel

You can't swing a dead cat in England without hitting some earnest bloke with an acoustic guitar and a bag of songs. But every once in a great while one not only rises above the mass of mediocrity, he (or she, for that matter) finds a way to persevere. And that's where Ruarri Joseph comes in. New self-released album Shoulder to the Wheel, set for a December 6 release in the U.K., is the Cornwall native's third collection of Brit neo-folk and certainly worthy of greater exposure particularly in the States where Joseph is, sadly, barely a faint blip on our imploding industry's musical radar. A shame, too. His songs have one foot firmly planted in the best of U.K. folk traditions -- Nick Drake, John Martyn, Cat Stevens, Richard Thompson -- and the other in the contemporary songwriting movement of David Gray (whom Joseph opened for recently), Newton Faulkner, Paolo Nutini and our own late Elliot Smith.

"I'm not here to set the world to rights," he says, "I guess I write about the little things, the tiny details that make people unique." Disarmingly direct and with an appealing rich, husky tone to his voice, Joseph presents his songs simply and without bells-and-whistle fanfare. After an '06 major label, major producer debut, his subsequent albums have a gentler tone, stripped of any ornamental artifice. Shoulder is master class of songwriting and production restraint as elegant songs like "Nervous Grin" and the lovely "Severed Dreams" resonate on the musical canvas in a splendor of dark shades and muted tones.

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Ruarri Joseph - "Severed Dream" (from the album Shoulder to the Wheel)

Ruarri Joseph - "Nervous Grin" (from the album Shoulder to the Wheel)