As soon as the guitars fire up behind the lead vocal Chris Timbers has to offer in his new single “Don’t Mind the Rain,” it becomes difficult for the audience to deny the pleasant tonal presence that the harmonies here form around us – seemingly without anything to back them in the production depth.
This track isn’t saturated with a heady master mix as a means of covering up cosmetic flaws; truth be told, Timbers crosses me as the type of singer/songwriter who wants his unvarnished sound at the forefront of our attention in “Don’t Mind the Rain,” rejecting the very sentiments of glossy pop music with a grainy strain of Americana we could use more of in contemporary rock. Although there’s been a lot of artists trying to put together something very similar to what we’re hearing in this new single, there aren’t many who have been able to give it up with the level of panache this singer/songwriter carries himself with in the recording booth. Between his voice and the magnetism it creates with the other instruments he’s surrounded by, this is one player who seems to relish so many of the qualities others have abandoned in the name of streamlined songcraft – and pretty damn well, I might add.
SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/album/1ga20zs18nAx6M9x6lw82k
The lyrics here never sound particularly saccharine, but there’s no getting around the emotionality with which Timbers is giving every verse to the audience. He doesn’t hide his vulnerability when it counts for something in this single, and I would even go so far as to say that this sounds more like the intensity one would expect out of a live jam as opposed to something recorded exclusively in the comforts of a studio, removed from a crowd of people to feed off of. Timbers just seems like the type of guy who would connect with an audience and get something even greater out of his material in the moment with them, which is more than can be said for a lot of the sample-laden live performers he’s coming up against on both sides of the mainstream market in 2023. His is an unpolished approach to real music, which perhaps makes it all the more real for those of us who care.
“Don’t Mind the Rain” feels a little short and sweet for the tenacity it bottles up inside of its first few bars alone, but this doesn’t leave me feeling like it provides an incomplete experience to the listener at all. I was very satisfied with the tone and punch of this single upon hearing it for the first time this January, and if 2023 is going to provide us with more awesome work like this from the Chris Timbers discography, I think it would be more than likely that we see his name showing up on the mainstream radar before a lot of his rivals see the same opportunities landing on their doorstep. He’s earning it here, and I don’t think many who love hard-edged Americana are going to quibble with his approach.
Chadwick Easton