He’s an odd character, Dan Reeder. Born in Louisiana in 1954 and raised in California, he moved to Germany in the early 1980s. Reeder is an artist through and through; he draws, paints and makes his own instruments which he then uses to compose folk songs that are unassuming but possess a certain charm that is often lacking in much of today’s music. Signed with John Prine’s label Oh Boy Records, the two musicians became friends and toured together several times before Prine passed away in April 2020. Like Reeder’s previous albums, the cover of this new album features his own drawings and is made up of 20 tracks, a bit like a set of Post-it notes stuck on a battered old fridge. The music is peaceful with a capital P, a sweet melancholy mixed with humour and nods, particularly on Young at Heart, when Reeder blows us away with his debonair voice singing “Sex is complicated, and so is democracy”. In these anxious and often stressful times, Dan Reeder’s folk ballads have arrived at the opportune moment. © Yan Ceh/Qobuz