Connor Selby – The Truth Comes Out Eventually

There is something quietly disarming about a voice that does not need to shout to be heard. Connor Selby has barely crossed into his late twenties, yet when the first note of "Someone" settles into the room, he has already planted himself somewhere between Bill Withers and a young Ray LaMontagne – without borrowing from either. This is his third album, and the first where you really sense that he has stopped searching and started living inside his own music.

The Truth Comes Out Eventually is a record that takes its time. It does not open with fanfares or a guitar solo trying to prove something. It opens with a man singing about longing, about looking for someone, and the band breathes with him rather than carrying him. That is one of the album's greatest virtues: the musicians seem to know exactly how much space Selby needs, and they give him precisely that much. Hammond organ sits beneath the voice like a blanket, the guitars speak in half-sentences, the drums hold back until the final verse.

"All Out Of Luck" lifts the tempo and lets Selby's soul side off the leash. You hear the lineage of Otis Rush and Bobby "Blue" Bland here, but also a hint of British pub-blues – the kind where the audience stops talking because something is happening in the room. The title track is perhaps the emotional centre of the album: a hushed confession that grows slowly, held together by a guitar line that sounds improvised until you notice how precise it is.

The songwriting is the second great surprise. "(I Am) Who I Am" could easily have become a hollow self-affirmation, but Selby writes it as a quiet admission rather than a slogan. "I Won't Be Hard To Find" recalls the best Memphis ballads of the late '60s, and "Amelia" is one of the finest lyrics I have heard from a British blues artist in a long time – concrete, vulnerable, free of any cliché.

The production carries the patience of an older man. There is enough room tone to feel the space, but nothing has been polished into glass. When the horns enter on "It Hurts To Be In Love", it is not to impress but to remind you that pain and sweetness share the same chord. "I'll Never Learn" is the evening's shuffle, one of the few tracks that moves at half-tempo with a glint in its eye, and Selby's guitar here is unusually talkative – short, vocal phrases in the Albert Collins tradition, but with a softer edge.

Toward the end the album opens up further. "What Else Is There To Say" is a quiet epilogue that sounds like the last conversation before someone leaves, and the closer "Songbird" is a tribute to all those who sing because they must, not because they should. It is a brave way to finish, because it leaves the listener with a feeling rather than a conclusion.

There are young Britons playing blues who sound older than they are. Selby is doing something different: he sounds like himself, and that is perhaps the rarest thing of all. He has no need to shout, no need to prove how many micro-tones he can squeeze from a Stratocaster. He trusts the songs, the band, and – most of all – the pause between the words.

That is how you recognise an artist on his way up. Not by what he does, but by what he refuses to do. The Truth Comes Out Eventually is not a perfect record, but it is an honest one, and in a genre where so much sounds like imitation, that is more than enough.

Score: 8.8/10

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