John Butler Trio - "Sunrise Over Sea"

Sounds like: blues tempo, reggae beat, bluegrass rhythms, acoustic folk guitar riffs, funk breakouts, rock jams and hip-hop freestyles.
Seems like: the new “it” sound.
Looks like: The dredlocked, 30-year-old musical prodigy Aussie also known as John Butler and his acoustic guitar, backed by an upright bass and drummer.

“Sunrise Over Sea” is the John Butler Trio’s first major presence in the U.S. but it is hardly an introductory album. Like the veterans they are, the trio masters 13 elaborate tracks, each with its own original hum branching off of the forest of sound that their music derives from. The album is slightly hypnotic and clearly the real McCoy of the new millennium’s sound.

Most musicians start their popularity outside of America and John Butler, as a citizen of Australia, did nothing out of the ordinary. In many respects, however, Butler’s musical career is anything but ordinary. Butler is considered a musical marvel in Australia where he resides at the top of the charts, is one of the biggest concert draws and is the most successful independent musician on that continent.

What guitarists will love about the album is that the man can play his lap steel, his 6-string acoustic guitar, his banjo and his 12-string guitar all just as well as the other. Butler shows off his talent like a new boob job at a strip joint. Very well.

The key to his popularity is in his regards to his roots. Butler’s crispness comes from his American-born, Australian-raised respect for the belief that all music is related to another, that it all ties together. His soul, his view of his music as an art, is his greatest strength.

Butler’s belief is revealed in his major label debut “Sunrise Over Sea.” The first track, “Treat Yo Mama,” gives a very appropriate introduction to the John Butler Trio. For about eight counts, country guitar riffs start out only to be interrupted by a heavy rock guitar and drums. Once you think that he’s already put two unexpecting genres together, he’s gone and done it again.

Butler’s vocals chime in with chanting, hip-hop sing-speak. With lyrics such as “Only one thing that you should not forget/You gotta treat you mama wit respect” and “You know I am Heaven bound but I'm surely hell bent,” the words alone grab listeners by the ear.

The song that can relate the best to most college bound relationships is “Betterman.” Butler wrote the song about his ex-girlfriend who made him a better person after dating her and although he knew he loved her immensely, he also knew they weren’t meant to be together. Bluegrass chords and blues rhythms with his seemingly signature heavy acoustic guitar and harmonies fill the song with a strange, yet beautiful sound.

In a serious downbeat, Butler’s song “There’ll Come A Time” sings of the inevitability of human actions and that if we keep heading in that direction, we’ll only be destroying our home and ourselves. The song preaches about “Mother Earth” and how the only way she lives is “in my love and in my soul (she’s) running through” in a swift and dark beat.

If you’re searching for that something different in the world of pop princesses and rappers in wife-beater tanks, the John Butler Trio is it. Hailed as the Dave Matthews of Australia, Butler now offers his music to us.