This wonderful CD gives an inkling of what so many lucky New Yorkers already know.  Something interesting happens when Marc Barnhill performs at a cafe:  people actually listen.  For sheer craft, Barnhill is simply one of the very best lyricists and songwriters around.  You hear the carefully chosen language and images that fill his songs, and you realize that he means every word.  But hold them at arm's length:  they'll tear you apart if you let them.  Then again, let them; you didn't know it, but that's why you came.
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Barnhill is pegged as a folk artist, and certainly his lyrics have the crowded soul-searching you'd expect from the postmodern singer/songwriter school.  But if Blue Time's words evoke a bygone literacy, the music also conjures up the past, which is appropriate for an album largely dedicated to exorcising childhood ghosts.  The retro/lo-fi combination of disparate elements somehow conjures up that "attic corner" rummaging that unifies the songs collected here, and we're treated to a pared-down, muddy watercolor melange of slo-core, seventies folk, eighties pop, noodling pianos and southern rock.  It isn't so much like any of those genres as like the distorted memory of them, and the result is wistful and eerie enough to work.  If ever Beck jams with the Allman Brothers at Billy Joel's house, they'll probably produce something that sounds like what's on this record.  Let's just hope they get Barnhill to write the lyrics.
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Marc writes captivating songs with intensely personal lyrics. Check out his CD "Blue Time" - Great songs and real creative production. (Is that a sitar on the first track? Nope...)
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An unusual and special collection of songs.  The production is spare, with a range of styles.  The opening song has a slow swirling quality, "Brother of Mine" suggests the Indigo Girls, "Shawl" is a bass-and-drums track reminiscent of Cake, and "Tragedy In Coney Island" sounds like jumpy island music; other songs vary between gentle ballads and catchy pop.  Even so, Barnhill has a definite "sound" that is hard to describe, and his voice is all the more sincere and affecting for its lack of professional polish.

The themes here include facing the future (or failing to), mending broken relationships (or failing to), family, fears, regrets -- and hope.  A woman loses herself at college.  Siblings rekindle (literally) their lost friendship and confront their past.  A child deals with divorcing parents.  And the language is great.  Some of it's funny and much of it is sad, and all of it is almost painfully direct; there's no wasted space on this album.
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