★★★★★
The music of the Garifuna people of Belize was little heard until the late Andy Palacio unfurled 2007's Wátina to much acclaim. The collective he led have released a follow-up, Ayó, but it's upstaged by this collaboration with Canadian songwriter Danny Michel. While nothing like as elaborate as Paul Simon's Graceland, the marriage of Michel's lilting lyricism and rolling acoustic rhythms proves similarly irresistible...
- www.theguardian.com
2013-08-25
★★★★★
Canadian songwriter Danny Michel has long been in love with Belize. He wrote the songs for 2010's Sunset Sea there and recently set up a scholarship fund for a high school there. For his 10th album and Six Shooter debut, Michel deepened his connection, living in Benque Viejo del Carmen and working with musicians from the Garifuna Collective and producer Ivan Duran, who's helped popularize music from Belize...
- www.nowtoronto.com
2012-10-22
★★★★★
At his best, Guelph songwriter and everything player Danny Michel can sound like a fresh-faced Tom Waits, or perhaps a less-affected Hawksley Workman (comparisons he's heard 1,000 times, but that are no less true for the saying). At his worst he sounds like a dyspeptic Billy Joel...
- www.hour.ca
2010-11-09
★★★★★
Danny Michel is no longer a newcomer. Even when he received his Juno nomination for Best New Artist back in 2004, he had been making music for about a decade in bands like the Rhinos and Starling. And now that his eighth solo album has appeared, he's an old hand and it shows. Sunset Sea oozes confidence and is relentlessly upbeat, something that will drive people either towards or away from it...
- www.exclaim.ca
2010-11-02
★★★★★
The stream of neoteric cover albums just keeps ballooning. Between Cat Power's Covers Record, Luther Wright's veer into The Wall and Camper Van Beethoven's note-for-note re-up on Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, we're staring down a veritable cultural wave. Soon half of all albums released will be "contemporary standards." Ottawa-based folk-rocker Danny Michel set his "homage" on the Bowie songbook and manages to do them justice...
- www.hour.ca
2010-11-02
★★★★★
Departed from Ottawa's Starling, Danny Michel fuses the synth of '80s new wave pop with the gnashing of guitars for an eclectic offering of highbrow lounge-like pop. Winding his way through some back-porch country tunes like "I Don't Wanna Hear It" is not difficult for the musician, given his tendency to go with the sonic flow. A couple of the songs suffer from a lack of self-editing, sounding as if they're perhaps a minute or a verse too long...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
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