By: Matthew Warnock
Click to Buy Iron & Coal from Amazon
Throughout the history of music, artists across the board have drawn upon personal experience to inspire their songwriting. Whether it be tales of love won and lost, dealing with personal demons or experiences growing up in an interesting family, songwriters will often dig into their personal past when looking for new inspiration. Singer and songwriter Jeremy Schonfeld is an artist with a personal story to tell and he does so with powerful emotional drive and first-rate musicianship on his latest work Iron & Coal.
The album tells the story of Jeremy’s father, a Holocaust survivor who spent time in the infamous and horrible Auschwitz Concentration Camp. By opening up his audience to such a personal and emotional family history, Schonfeld has not only written an engaging album from a musical perspective, but has told his father’s story of trial, tribulation and survival at the same time.
Now, some readers are probably thinking that an album written about such a deeply emotional subject matter would be filled with dark and gloomy songs, but this is not the case. Ballads such as “If Ever” are written with a slower tempo, but the mood is uplifting. The major harmonies, complete with arco and pizzicato strings coupled with a memorable piano backing all combine to bring a smile to the listener’s face. Other tracks such as “Piece of Me” are written in a similar, slow-tempo but emotionally uplifting manner, though in this case with a heavier rhythmic groove in the second half of the track.
Click to Buy Iron and Coal from Amazon.com
By doing so, Schonfeld is not only breaking expectations about what this album might have been like, he is writing songs that would sound great on any album, written about any subject matter. Albums based on a concept can sometimes be pigeonholed because of the subject matter that relates each track, but Schonfeld breaks these barriers, writing an entertaining album filled with songs that would sound great on their own, regardless of the lyrical content or relationship to other songs on the record.
There are also tracks that seriously groove such as the funky, rock-influenced “Save Me.” The song is part Alternative Rock, part Funk groove and all soul. It is one of the biggest highlights on the record, which is saying something given the high level of songwriting that Schonfeld displays throughout. By bringing in funky, rock based tracks to the mix, Schonfeld allows the album to be diverse musically, which adds diversity to the lyrical content which is written around a central, cohesive subject.
Overall, Iron & Coal is a heartfelt record that started out as a tribute by a son to his father, but ended up being a world-class record that defies any expectations listener’s may have going into the album. The songs are well-written, the music is interesting and creatively arranged and the subject matter is powerful, providing with a highly-personal, emotional and engaging musical experience for fans of any genre of music.
