Nate gutman - scrap paper

Nate Gutman 

Scrap Paper
self-released; 2013

3.9 out of 5

By Kristen Fisher

Poetry happens to be music in motion, until you actually put music to the words because it can be hard to convey the emotion. When his EP Scrap Paper came out on July 30th of this year, Nate Gutman has been putting his poetry to his guitar since he was twelve years old. With that amount of time to perfect such a sound that has been compared to Iron and Wine, Gutman writes in an eloquent script that makes the strongest of hearts weaken. The lo-fi private sessions were recorded in Gutman's home. From hardcore to folk, you can't say he hasn't covered a wide area involving genres.

While acoustic EP's are in every Starbucks on every corner, coming across a heartfelt, inside windowed look at someone's work who actually takes the time to work on their songwriting is rare. There are some EP's that are instrumentally strong but not lyrically. And vice versa. But Gutman has all the ties in order.

The album starts out with one of the highlights of the album entitled "Love Has Truly Come". Gutman's voice is calming but also seeps with melancholy as he sings "Down in the south sea I thought I felt our breath in the cool breeze above my head and, in the seagulls that cried out above, I thought I heard our love"."Little Acorn" is another tearjerker where he delivers a fantastic vocal performance. The guitar melody is fragile and attractive but its his voice that contributes to the emotional weight of the song

The ending track “Somewhere Back There” has the intimacy to only be heard through headphones. This album is a must have in your collection, between variations of folk and indie rock given that today's pop hits have the same three verses repeated over and over. He builds a song through a conversation where the words rhyme and continues giving an intuition of the deepest onset of human connection.

This look into Gutman’s lyrical life on his EP Scrap Paper has paid off immensely.

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