Place We Knew＜Green Vinyl＞

With a pair of Australian multi-platinum smash hits under his belt, singer/songwriter Dean Lewis issued his debut album, A Place We Knew, in early 2019. Balancing emotive acoustic moments with robust bursts reminiscent of an Ed Sheeran-fronted Mumford & Sons, Lewis mined the highs and lows of life and love, offering bittersweet glimpses of past relationships with anguished introspection. Echoing similar souls like Jamie Lawson, Passenger, and Glen Hansard, Lewis took that tender and yearning vulnerability and wove it into his simple yet evocative storytelling, resulting in painfully relatable snapshots of times when things just don't work out. While softer tracks such as "Don't Hold Me," "Chemicals," and "A Place We Knew" comfort and soothe, the achy "7 Minutes" embraces regret as a repentant Lewis repeats "I forgot to love you" and the fatalistic "Half a Man" finds him alone in a hotel room, pushing love away in a spiral of hopelessness. Though dour, these confessionals ground A Place We Knew in an honest reality. Elsewhere, Lewis amplifies the energy with urgent, passionate anthems such as "Hold of Me" and "Straight Back Down," which channel Of Monsters and Men and Mumford, while album centerpiece "Waves" offers a much-needed dose of hope. Indeed, Lewis occasionally veers too close to woe-is-me self-pity, but his empathy pulls the album from that edge. With A Place We Knew, he is not just a shoulder to cry on, but one to cry with. ~ Neil Z. Yeung