When Charles Wesley Godwin put out his debut album Seneca, he was a mysterious, rough-around-the-edges sort of man from West Virginia playing bars in Morgantown. Since then, he released his sophomore album How The Mighty Fall, which reintroduced him as a master storyteller. Standout cuts like “Strong,” “Jesse,” and “Temporary Town” proved his versatility, sharing both personal anecdotes and fantastic yarns alike. Since that record, Godwin has exploded on his with Zach Bryan, which led to him signing with Big Loud Records. Nowadays, his name is a whole lot bigger than the town he hails from.
His first major label album Family Ties puts his storytelling and world-building on full display. Songs like “The Flood” create characters and get the listener invested from the first note to the cinematic bridge. These slower songs give Charles some room to show off his earthy baritone voice. He’s definitely been around the block as a singer-songwriter, but that crisp annunciation and tall vowel sounds are as clean as ever.
However, this isn’t to say that he’ll shy away from a barn burner and dial up the speed; Godwin’s up-tempo choruses create a live atmosphere ripe for foot stomping and clapping (see Seneca’s “Hardwood Floors). In a world dominated by percussion and artificial beats, Charles Wesley Godwin’s producer and guitar player Al Torrence has a brilliant knack for assembling huge, exciting mixes that make you feel as if you’re right in the room with the Allegheny High. Songs like “10-38” and “Two Weeks Gone” are placed perfectly in the tracklist to keep the listener’s ears perked up between some of the slower ballads.
It’s always been important to Charles to lean heavily on his West Virginian roots in his writing, developing his projects around a central theme. Throughout the promo cycle for this album, he’s talked about how a lot of the substance for the album is focused on his wife and two kids.
Nowadays, Music Row is grossly oversaturated with goofy puns, with almost every song title having a groan-worthy double meaning. As such, Godwin deserves a lot of credit in moments like “Miner Imperfections” where he’s able to use a bit of witty wordplay to his advantage and specifically tie things back to his roots in an already sentimental song. Yes, it’s a pun, but the earnest creativity in this song about Charles’s father’s life as a miner makes it far more endearing than needlessly corny.
When it comes to production, Al Torrence has always been able to craft beautiful soundscapes with various traditional instruments. Torrence has worked with Godwin since Seneca, and even before that during his time with the band “Union Sound Treaty.” During “Another Leaf,” which is almost two songs in one, Torrence is able to blend many different sounds together to build a cohesive musical plot line. Torrence and Godwin create these rolling, cinematic progressions that always match the flow of the narrative. This is the perfect fusion of inspired, wise lyricism and musical backdrops that create a sense of real movement and character development. Godwin isn’t headlining arenas just yet, but these songs are powerful enough to fill any venue.
For a while now, Charles Wesley Godwin has closed out his shows with John Denver’s folk classic ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads.’ A fitting closer to an album about family, Charles delivers this cover with both gusto and reverence in a tribute truly worthy of Denver himself. Godwin’s backing band The Allegheny High joins him on the vocal harmonies in the last chorus and it’s simply blissful. This is a band that has stuck together for some time, and their joyous chemistry on one of the best songs ever written is just about as good as country music can get.
Now on a major label, Charles Wesley Godwin is at the forefront of the Appalachian sector of the neo-traditional revolution. Now amongst some of country music’s heaviest hitters, it’s exciting to see someone with such a richly traditional sound as Godwin getting the mainstream recognition his fans have been calling for since the beginning. No longer in the shadows of Zach Bryan, our favorite West Virginian storyteller is branching out and building a musical canon for which he should be extremely proud.
9.7/10
Check out more of our reviews here!
