Regular Columnists

Artist: Arby DeCamp
Album: Sleep By Numbers
CD Review: Leonard Cohen sings lullabies with Django Reinhardt on guitar!! What a combination. When it works, that’s exactly what Arby DeCamp’s CD, Sleep By Numbers is like. Two numbers – Go To Sleep and As I Go To Sleep do just that successfully. DeCamp has a smoky bottom bass voice that easily croons through his original lullabies and it doesn’t hurt that his guitar playing is Latin-tinged conjuring up pictures of 50’s album covers with dark-eyed beauties.

Production is minimal – bass and background vocals, but DeCamp’s guitar playing is enough most of the time. There is talent here. The CD is pegged as a CD with Lullabies for Children of All Ages, and it’s just that – lullabies. Sleep By Numbers, Go To Sleep, Sleeping Soon and I’m So Sleepy - you get the picture. But….

I was sleeping too early on in the CD. First song is kind of cool; it’s called Drifting Away. Sets the mood nicely, introduces you to DeCamp’s Cohenesque voice. Song two – same key, song three – same key, same tempo, same feel. I know he’s perhaps going for that monotonic tone to put me to sleep but I was craving something a little different by the second song. It was tough getting through to song six – Go To Sleep that is quite good and I had to wait until the last song to get my fix again.

Overall, I would have opted for a few key changes and perhaps a bit more of that Latin flavour – camp it up a bit (no pun intended).

I was unable to find anything about DeCamp on the Internet and the materials sent to me were minimal. There doesn’t appear to be a website, but you can contact DeCamp at roycam52@aol.com.