North Carolina man Jonathan Wilson knows guitars (we’re talking luthier level), can control a studio and has worked with artists as varied as Erykah Badu and Jackson Browne. And now his epic debut (an hour and a half of music) arrives, delving deep into all that he loves and has learnt over the years.

On listening to the many acoustics, the unhurried pace and the warm ambience the record possesses, it’s of little surprise that recordings started at LA’s Laurel Canyon. This is an album embracing its obvious influences, most notably Jackson Browne and Neil Young. And if all this is starting to sound like a session musician’s bland vision of what music is or another singer/songwriter stroking his own melancholic ego – well it’s not. Wilson manages to swerve the negatives – his abundance of laid-back melody and thickly layered production distances him from the plain and ordinary.

The singer possesses an ethereal whisper of a voice. It floats delicately above the old and beaten piano that leads the title track. It’s a summer breeze on the smooth and silky, acoustic running ‘Desert Raven’, and a folk banter on the guitar-picking ‘Rolling Universe’ – the latter an album highlight.

It is the atmosphere and production that continually impresses, banding between the more upbeat and clear-headed tunes like ‘The Way I Feel’ to the introverted, swamped meanders like the ten-minute album closer ‘Valley of the Silver Moon’.

Sure we know the setting well and Wilson is a little too passive at times, but this is where he wants to be and he fully immerses himself in his passion for sun-baked, country-tinged sounds, wrapped in guitars, pianos and mellowed rhythms.

Thankfully, throughout the record Wilson maintains a disregard for verse, chorus, verse, letting the emotion dictate the direction and structure, and the music continually wandering off in a daydream. It makes for a refreshing take on a familiar mining ground and opens the canyon for business once more.

-Zac Cohen-