Julian Fauth

With his second CD for Electro-Fi Records, Toronto, ON’s Julian Fauth has created a blues masterwork. He’s a two-fisted barrelhouse piano player who swings as well as he boogies. Still a young man in his early 30s, his singing is distinct and authoritative. He’s a good guitar player too, although this time out he’s heard playing it on only one track, "East Toronto Nervous Breakdown,” a hallucinatory duet with Andrew Jurecka’s violin. This set features 14 Fauth compositions, plus four idiosyncratic covers, the highlight being Fats Waller’s "Hopeless Love Affair.” What really sets Fauth apart is his imagination. His songs are vivid stories about oddball characters living in society’s seedy underbelly leavened with the occasional laugh to keep things from getting too dark. Comparing him to a young Tom Waits is easy but Fauth’s that good. The broadened musical horizons of Ramblin’ Son, with its jazzy, almost Broadway musical vibe (check "Yet Another Stagger Lee”), is a further sign of his growing musical maturity.