Straight down the middle of the road, Danie Syre plants her musical feet in a solid country/pop/blues tradition. Think Crystal Gayle pop influenced by a hint of Neil Young folksiness. In all respects—songwriting, arrangement, performance and production—this record reflects a safe, comfortable, easy-going approach. There is nothing punchy or in-your-face here, very little quirky, cosmic or sublime. From its competent medium-sized town studio musician backup band to Ms. Syre’s overtly pleasant, somewhat lounge style lead vocals, do not look for any edgy innovation or adventurous creative risk captured herein. Put this on when you need a relaxing sonic background to your lazy afternoon hangin’ around the house.

Some suggestions that may better optimize this work start with pushing for more stretch and artistic statement in the basic songwriting. Musically, every piece is decidedly derivative, almost never reaching for the unabashed passion of high level, tough-to-control emotion that makes up the majority of world class musical magic. The recording mix and overall production are fine for a demo, but too disjointed and lackluster to qualify as a world release product. A finer ear for the overall mix and, across the board, perhaps a dryer treatment, higher volume and increased compression would benefit all vocals.

Let’s take a ride through each track:

1. Something Real … This is the rocker. Actually a standard stock soft rocker, but as heavy as we get on this CD. Its great lyrical message makes valuable suggestion to its apparently disconnected recipient, who may benefit to heed the advice. Decent Steve Earle-ish vibe and groove, minus the ragged passion.

1. Daydreams ..: A sweet and gentle but bland country steel-styled Margaritaville, with a touch of pathos due to one particular chord change. Sharper production vision might really make this one shine. Perhaps the most soulful expression here, but please tune up the steel more, and put the vocal on top.

1. Little Kiss … The first of the tiptoe shuffles. Everyone’s having fun as sexy intent arrives strong and clear in the lyric of romantic contrast. Wide variety of overly busy instrumental accompanists. Please put the vocal on top.

1. You Set Me Free … A strong nod to Neil Young’s Helpless and Dylan’s Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door. Soft and swooning, we are tenderly and skillfully carried in a grateful spirit.

1. Rose … finally, finally puts Danie’s pretty voice up above it all, where it belongs—clear, consistent and intelligible, somewhat due to sparse production. A sincere introspection into a highly desired but confusingly denied special relationship.

1. Time For the Truth … Uh-oh, lead vocal is stuck in murky back again. Oh well, can’t argue with the message here, similar to Track-1. Clever but loud bass solo intro and outro, with guitar borrowings from James Taylor’s Fire and Rain.

1. Baby, Maybe … A gently rockin’ bluesy sexy shuffle. Again, the lead vocal volume.

1. My Way … Sad and slow, piano and violin plus vocal. Relationship reflected in a highly introspective psychology.

1. Campfire Song … definitely starts that way, with a strumming guitar. Enter lighthearted shuffle infused with happy memories of past young fun, all done with a strong sense of old-fashioned glass-raising.

1. Fools … Serious ballad, again self-questioning. Piano and harmonica accompaniment.

1. Simple Soul … Shuffle me home again. Good gosh, bring up that lead vocal, man! A bit of campy Winchester Cathedral feel bops along nicely and lightly in bonafide fun.

1. Martin .. closes out in the characteristic shuffle rhythm. This love song to a guitar is straight ahead blues with harmonica and, of course, “Martin” sounding off in the great tone that inspires a lyric like this.

Review by Mike Ososki

Mike Ososki, Reviews Danie Syre, Time for the Truth

Having only released two albums, Canadian singer/songwriter Danie Syre already sounds like she has had a lifetime of writing and recording behind her. And with her newest release of Time For the Truth, she is sure to gain a lot of followers.

Like many other singer/songwriters, Danie Syre takes experiences in her life and lets them influence her writing. Time For the Truth, the second release of Danie Syre, was written during a time when she was going through some heartache, having lost her mother and going through a separation with her husband just before recording the album. Instead of letting these things drag her down, Syre used these and other events as subjects for songs for the new album. Danie even wrote the song “Martin” around a guitar given to her by her father who died after the completion of Syre’s first album of The Journey.

Time For the Truth begins with “Something Real”, a song about going through a relationship that isn’t perfect. This song is followed by “Daydream”, about starting a new relationship. These songs are the perfect way to begin the album, as they give the listener just a taste of the style of writing from Danie Syre.

“Little Kiss” is the next song on the album. With this song, Syre kicks up the energy level on the release. The upbeat song is about giving a relationship a chance, even if the relationship seems to be based around two opposite personalities being attracted to each other.  One of the strongest tracks on the release is the title track of “Time For the Truth,” written after the death of her estranged mother. The song is like someone finally saying what was in her heart that she never was able to say before.  “Baby Maybe” helps bring the energy level back up after the somber message of the title track. The song is about living in the moment and allowing things to happen, as they will.  As with many folk/folk-rock albums, Time For the Truth alternates between songs that have an easy feel and those with a rockier nature, and when the fiddle is added to the music, those tunes have a slight Celtic feel to them.

A lot of things have happened to Danie Syre over the years that have developed her writing style. The resulting songs on her second release of Time For the Truth sound very professional. This writing style will only get better with time.  As she is a guitarist as well as a singer-songwriter, the songs on this album were partially shaped with the help of her guitar. The songs were completed with the help of many talented musicians, and those on this long list deserve credit for helping to shape that sound and style.

The dozen songs on Time for the Truth are all easy to listen to and are varied enough to keep the listener’s attention. For only a second release, Danie Syre seems to already have found the formula for success; only time will tell.

Review by Matheson Kamin

Matheson Kamin, Reviews Danie Syre, Time for the Truth

When I listened to this record for the very first time and Danie Syre chimed in on the first track, “Something Real”, I immediately thought of Margo Timmins from one of my favorite Canadian bands, Cowboy Junkies, with a hint of twang. Ms. Syre’s voice is as smooth as freshly laundered flannel sheets. I say flannel because flannel is warm and comfortable especially when it’s freshly laundered. This record is very warm and comfortable in the end, but first it takes the listener through an array of emotions, mostly surrounding abandonment and broken relationships.

For instance, the title cut “Time for the Truth”, written after the break-up of her fourteen-year marriage, is a song about love and eventually the evaporation of the love, which once brought the two of them together. She sings the song with an enormous amount of emotion. She articulates every word in such a manner you know she truly means what she is singing. “And its time for the truth/This time I’ve nothin’ to lose/And its time for the truth/And this time I’ve been waitin’ for you” It’s not a hateful song really. It’s more about closure and eventually about being able to move on with her life, which she has apparently done, as evidenced by the release of this set of eleven original tunes.

Track five on this record is a tune called “Rose”. Ms. Syre didn’t know her mother very well and, in fact, had been raised almost exclusively by her father. Later on there were twelve years where Danie and her mother did not speak at all. In 2008 when she heard the news that her estranged mother had passed away, “Rose” was born. It’s a song full of questions that we always wanted to ask but never had the chance. Now the answers to the questions are all gone and there is no possible way to retrieve them. Therefore, she has been left to develop her own answers, which will eventually lead her to forgiveness and ultimately healing. “What were you running for/Who were you running against/I just don’t know/Would you say it was all left to fate/Or was it a script of a role you had to play/If I had written our story/I’d be sure to  make it happy/I would have written it that way. “Rose” is a beautiful song and is performed to perfection. The wailing of the pedal steel guitar, beautifully played by Nathan Carroll, resides in the background eloquently representing the tears that go with the song.

The tunes on this record were conjured up with a large dose of heart, pain, suffering, and eventually fond memories (“Campfire Song”) with a dash of comedy (“Simple Fool”) that brings us some relief from the pain.

In her bio, she tells of her father being the biggest influence in her life in many ways, but especially in the evolution of her musical journey. He was a guitarist and there would be many a day where friends and family would come over. They would sit and play together for hours. Many of these friends and family members were excellent musicians themselves, so her almost constant exposure to the arts helped her to form into the talented musician she is today. The material for her first record, The Journey, released in 2007, came to her while caring for her ailing father, to whom she dedicated the album.

When her father passed, Ms. Syre was left with his Martin guitar he loved so much. This inspired her to write “Martin”, a cool little blues song written out of the love and adoration she possessed for her father and his guitar. Even though the song is called “Martin”, I’m not sure her father didn’t play a huge role in the creation of this song, which by the way, happens to be my favorite tune on the record with “Simple Fool” a close second.

Ms. Syre wrote all the songs on this record plus sang and played guitar. In addition, she was accompanied by a small army of musicians; Nathan Carroll played lead, acoustic, and pedal steel guitars, Darcy Johnstone played bass, Joey McIntyre on drums, Jason Kodie on the piano, accordion, and the Hammond, Shannon Johnson on violin, Scott Peters on the mandolin, Chris Wynters on guitar, Krispian Smidt-Paborn on harmonica, and Kjierstin Hubka sang background vocals.

This record is quite dramatic in many ways, born from many different emotions. The death of her father, the estrangement and eventual death of her mother, the end of her own marriage, all of which has come together to create the vision she would need to write the material for this sophomore effort. The emotions that went into the creation of the material transcend into her performance as well.

Danie Syre is certainly an artist I will keep my ear very close to the ground for, listening for more to come. If she can keep writing material as strong as the eleven songs on this record, she should have a very bright future ahead.

Review by Rod Ames

Reviews, Rod Ames Danie Syre, Time for the Truth