Steve Hefter – Selma

contributor: Oliver Klozoph

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The modern factory-music industry inundates us with trash, churned out to the masses, feeding those poor souls whom have never been blessed enough to hear the ‘real’ thing. Every whinny, screaming, guitar strumming, borderline illiterate clown with a laptop makes an album. The problem is not that they make an album, no, the problem arises when they decide that they need to share it it with the rest of the world via the internet. Its not to say that all these people making records have no artistic ability. Not at all. I firmly believe that every human being has art in their souls. Its what makes us human. Its what separates us from the Sasquatch. Bigfoot can’t rap.

Steve Hefter made an album. He even recorded some of it in his bedroom. But what separates Steve Hefter and his record Selma from the droves of bearded bedroom bards is something that they just don’t have, or better yet, that they don’t know how to tap into. What is that thing? I wish I knew. Some say passion, history, originality, creativity. Some even dare say talent. What it is, I presume, is that Steve Hefter knows how to write a song and play it and sing it like Steve Hefter.

Selma is a genuine record. Isn’t that what is missing so often in music these days? There are flaws. But those ‘flaws’ are what make it a great record. Hefter performs each song purely. His delivery and phrasing are undeniably his. He wears his influences on his sleeve for sure, but why shouldn’t he? Those are his influences. They obviously inspire him. But what he takes from the canon of works and myriad artists that inspire him, he melds into pure expressions of his own.

On “We All Fall Forward”, a bouncy, half melancholy-half spiritual duet with Katie Field the pair sings “when I cry out at night / father forgive me / I’m not sure if I need you or the Lord / should have been better to you both/ while you were living / the world stops turning and we all fall forward”. Introspective lamentations such as this a sprinkled throughout the record. “Fashioned From Dry Fruit” feels like a song Leonard Cohen might have written were he raised in Houston rather than in our northern neighbor. On “Richard Greene” amidst Hefter’s lilting guitar work and stark lyrics, one can almost hear the last leaves of autumn blowing down the street, winter on the horizon.

Steve Hefter made an album and you should listen to it. My advice to you, dear reader, is to go out and see Steve Hefter and his kin. Go out and listen to soulful music. It appears to be an endangered species. Or at the very least, elusive, like Bigfoot.