George Boomsma – The Promise Of Spring: Album Review

By John Barlass on 2nd May 2024 • ( Leave a comment )

The Northallerton Troubadour, George Boomsma, returns with eight new songs. Reflective, nostalgic, deeply personal and thoroughly engaging.

Release Date: 18^th April 2024

Label: Self Release

Formats: CD / Vinyl / Digital

We last heard from George Boomsma, Northallerton’s singing, songwriting troubadour, back in the autumn of 2022, when we were thrown into a bout of deep contemplation by his glorious 4-track EP, What’s Left Behind, a collection of intensely introspective songs that we reckoned characterized the shape of the world at that time. And now – he’s back, this time with a full-length album of personal reflections, and he’s got a few friends in tow.

Without doubt, The Promise Of Spring represents a significant step forward for George. Anyone who has had the good fortune to have been charmed by his tumbling acoustic guitar, his comforting, versatile and crystal-clear voice and his thought-provoking songs is in for a few amazing and thoroughly pleasant surprises. First of all, he’s recruited the help of Ally McDougal (drums), Will Looms and Jack Gillen (electric guitars) and Harry Fausing Smith (strings and string arrangements) to lift his tunes to new heights. Secondly, there’s George’s own contributions – he supplements his vocals and acoustic guitar with layers of electric guitar, piano, keyboards, bass and percussion. Thirdly, the album’s production is just about perfect; luscious and sweeping, but never overdone, with each instrument afforded just the right amount of space to ensure that its points are effectively made. The Promise Of Spring is a work of great beauty.

The album’s theme is grief. Over the eight songs, George reflects on the loss of a family member and his reflections are made all the more poignant by the snippets of recordings made by George and his brother Tom (to whom the album is dedicated) when they were children, which link the tracks on the physical versions of the album. But don’t approach the Promise Of Spring expecting to wallow in a muddy lake of Leonard Cohen-like misery because the songs here, whilst undeniably deeply personal, are poetic, engaging and, above all else, musically gratifying.

George Boomsma’s style has often attracted comparisons to Nick Drake – his songs are gentle, reflective and often accompanied by his accomplished fingerpicking – but he’s no copyist. The songs on The Promise Of Spring take in strains of jazz, folk, laid-back rock, Indian themes and even funk and rock & roll and, alongside those Nick Drake comparisons – never overt here – I picked up flavours of Elbow, Donovan and, occasionally, The Beatles. But, overwhelmingly, these songs – and this sound – is George Boomsma’s, and George Boomsma’s alone.

It’s the jazzy Fallen that gets the show on the road. Spacy fingerpicked electric guitar provides the backing to George’s gentle harmonized vocals before things settle into a velvety groove that hooks the listener in, with the sure knowledge that their attention won’t be wandering anywhere else for the next 30 or so minutes.

The album’s title track is folkier but no less engaging, as the richness returns to provide the perfect showcase for that wonderful voice and, if the voice has already enchanted you by this stage, things get even better for the beautiful Lady Of The Nile, a vocal piece-de-résistance, in anybody’s book. Whether he’s pitching high or low, George’s voice never loses its comforting charm and the accompanying blend of instruments is perfect. And – I love the way that, at the end of the song, each instrument fades away, leaving just George’s piano to bring us gently back to Earth.

The full-sounding 2+30 is driven along by a crisp, sharp drumbeat and George’s rock-solid bassline and, after the dreamscapes of the earlier tracks, the song’s funky groove is a genuine surprise. Then, by way of further contrast, Cashmere Grey, another of the album’s standout tracks, invokes the sunny Californian AOR of late-period Fleetwood Mac. This time, George’s vocal inflections remind me of Donovan, and Ally’s drumfills give the song a summery, psych-pop feel.

Thence to another extreme entirely… Johnny Walker Guy is a strutting rocker, so awash with loud, crashing guitars and echo-y vocals that it almost verges into Glam territory. It may sound joyful, but there’s tragedy lurking in the lyrics, as the reference to “…all the doctors and all the nurses…” in the song’s closing line testifies. The song is a celebration, but maybe a celebration of a life cut short. And, after such bombast, the gentle, folky, Passing the Silence seems all the more contemplative – and there’s a strangely ominous feel to George’s piano outro.

As I’ve probably said before, I love it when an album is sequenced to save the very best until last – as George Boomsma has done here with the marvelous Open Curtain. Propelled along by a recurring electric guitar theme and grand gestures on keyboards and drums, it’s a wonderful slice of Indian-flavoured psychedelia. The guitar solo is breathtaking and George’s vocals are, once again, truly amazing.

The Promise of Spring takes George Boomsma to whole new level. It’s a remarkable album.

Watch George and his band perform Lily Of The Nile, a track from the album, here: