Canter Bridge

Ryan Ahlwardt’s deep roots in four-part men’s music down at Indiana University show up even in a thoughtful-pop album like I Can See Forever. It’s there in the capacity and control of his voice even when it flits near the limits of his natural range.

The title track shows it off, though not as convincingly as track two’s ‘Maybe on Another Day’, an enigmatic lament of love pronounced dead by two unwilling parents over a phone line and from ‘half a world a way’. ‘Holly’ is not unlike it. Together they suggest that Ryan Ahlwardt pays attention to strangers, semi-strangers, and non-strangers, occasionally chronicling their little dramas in song, stories that become large in the writing of them down and of course always were so to those who live in them. By the time you’ve listened this tune three or four times, ‘Holly’ is almost a friend of yours and ‘Holly is an island girl’ that resounds in the soul.

Oh, and another thing: he tells his own stories too, and those of the people who hang closest to him. You can almost crawl behind the lines of ‘Saturday Night Live girl’ and imagine that big NYC audition. This is, after all, the guy who could write a song about driving to Bloomington and have it turn out singable. Ahlwardt’s website (www.ryansongs.com) give his take on when the first person is really not the first person, but the fact is the man still has a knack for squeezing his puppies into other people’s shoes and singing from there.

Ryan Ahlwardt is only going to get better as his upcoming marriage, the hard knocks of life, and his own joi d’vivre mellow him out. It will be a pleasant thing to track with the music he makes.