The guitar playing and vocals are breathtaking on this CD. We used the song greatest gift as our wedding song.
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The rare moments when I hear music like this are when my actively suppressed desire to be a musician completely overpowers me. I don't think I ever heard an artist manifest so much raw passion. The primordial vibrations pouring out of his voice and the beautifully soothing strum of the guitar involuntarily make you instantly connect to either him or what he's saying.

Acoustic in New York is like a storybook, an uninhibited, poignant narrative of one of his (or whomever's) evolutionary stages in life. Bored, the first track, expresses a restlessness and deep yearning for something meaningful in life. For purpose. For the unordinary. The next song unveils an otherworldly, altruistic dedication to better humanity. As if carrying the weight of the entire planet on his shoulders is the solution to alleviating his boredom or restlessness. Interspersed amidst this altruism (...Take my hand / Every woman every man / I'll lead you to the Promised Land) are snippets of his experiences with love, narrated in such a way that you wonder how a 25-year-old could possibly have acquired so much wisdom about life, love, and happiness. (I especially like the quite reflective Paris.) There's also a playful, sultry side, Cool Rider, in case you start to wonder if he's always so intense.

Although the album emits an overall message of optimism, if you listen closely, you can detect a subtle haunting strain hovering in the background. It becomes more evident toward the latter half (Stay) and quite obvious at the end (Rooms of My Mind) in which he tears away the final layer protecting his vulnerability, grappling with how to come to terms with a mind-boggling swirl of confusing identities. It's as if he realizes that if he decides to take it upon himself to be everyone's savior, then there's no one to save him: Jesus if you please don't let me fall to pieces anymore / I'm somewhere in my head / I might as well be dead.

There is no solution to this realization. His plea, "...can't you see that / I'm no ordinary guy?", brings him right back to where he started on Bored: I just can't believe that I'm stuck in this hell [once more].

This is my favorite of his CDs; it's hard to not repeat the album description.... His lyrics are the creation of an incredible genius (e.g., "spilling paradise all over each other" - Promised Land) and the way he plays the guitar is completely mesmerizing, captivating. It's difficult for me to describe his music, but the instant he starts to play, you know that you're listening to a master. I don't know how he does it. He reminds me of Bob Dylan--but the sound is different. More alive. More real. An ever present beat, like subconsciously being aware of your own heart beating. 

I really don't think you can go wrong buying Acoustic in New York.
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