12.01.07 Maverick Magazine (UK) STEPHEN SIMMONS | Something In Between Relationship analysis with tunes SOMETHING IN BETWEEN is a remarkably 'musical' album. That may sound like a slightly damning thing to say about a songwriter's record, but it's the first thing that strikes you about it. There's no solo acoustic guitar going on, nothing is stripped down to the bone, instead there's a lovely full band feel that recalls Jackson Browne's sound, updated a little. This can be heard throughout the album, notably on New Scratches, first cousin to Cut It Away from Browne's LAWYERS IN LOVE, but little hints pop up all over the place. But Simmons' songs aren't overshadowed by the music. SOMETHING IN BETWEEN is an album about relationships, new, old, struggling, failed, and while Simmons' world is not necessarily a happy one, it's one we all inhabit to some extent, and he both illuminates it and offers hope and justification for the lives led in it. He is a poet of the prosaic, and in so being reveals it to be not so prosaic at all under the surface. Though he harvests familiar fields to glean his subject matter he has a way with a line, a couplet or a verse that cuts to the heart of the matter. Take "Tonight my heart has got brand new scratches baby / and you must think new scratches look good on me' (New Scratches) or the knowing guilt of "And babe you're a lot like a jacket / that I put on to keep warm / but I'll take you off when I feel / the rays of the sun and their warmth' (Down Tonight), just two amongst many equally good. Simmons sound is a little slicker than that of the bulk of his contemporaries, which makes it easy on the ear, but his music is no less real or affecting for it, and SOMETHING IN BETWEEN is well worth seeking out. —JS