Last year, Scottish singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ray Wilson released a beautiful live album full of acoustic songs highlighted by his smoky Peter Gabriel-meets-Don Henley-via-Bryan Adams voice. The album, simply titled Live and Acoustic, made my Top 10 list of 2002. Now, along comes Change – another beautiful acoustic album that may just make my Top 10 list of 2003.
Probably best known as the guy who replaced Phil Collins in Genesis for that band's ill-fated 1997 album Calling All Stations, Wilson's talent runs much deeper than Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks allowed him to demonstrate on that disc. Each of the 13 tracks on Change presents a musical vignette – a memorable, melodic and sometimes painful slice of Wilson's life that he's willing to share with the listener, friend to friend. Nearly every song sounds as if it could anchor the soundtrack of a dramatic film, and none of them are too long that they wear out their welcome. In fact, by making Change clock in at a mere 41 minutes, Wilson leaves listeners yearning for more.
Before Change, before Live and Acoustic and before Calling All Stations, Wilson sang in a grunge band called Stiltskin, which hit the UK charts thanks to Levi's featuring one of the group's songs in a television commercial. On Live and Acoustic, Wilson performed songs from Calling All Stations, as well old-school Genesis, latter-period Genesis and ex-Genesis members' solo material. On the aptly titled Change, however, he wisely leaves Genesis behind, forging his own mature musical path – one that's well worth traveling.
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