Infinite Shuffle

I’m generally not a big fan of the solo singer-songwriter genre. I mean, there are a lot of great artists out there, but, for the most part, I like songs that have more going for them than just vocals and one or two instruments.

That being said, I was mildly surprised by how much I enjoyed Barchords, the recent sophomore release by Bahamas — aka Afie Jurvanen.

Jurvanen, who hails from Barrie, Ontario, does his best to channel the indie-folk vibe of such contemporaries as Conor Oberst and M. Ward.

The above song, along with other tracks such as “Time and Time Again”, “Be My Witness” and “Where You Go”, does a good job of continuing a tone of soulfoul, heart-on-his-sleeve folk-rock.

The best track on the album is probably the opener, “Lost in the Light”. It’s the most complex song on here and conjures up a number of other artists — especially the Dawes-like chorus.

Bahamas has definitely matured as an artist since his 2009 debut, Pink Strat. On that album, Jurvanen’s vocals sounded a lot like Chris Martin — that is, if you took the Coldplay lead singer and turned him into a slow-grooving, indie-folk solo artist.

The standouts from that album include “Hockey Teeth”, the slightly harder, bluesier “Try, Tried, Trying” and “Whole, Wide, World”, the Wreckless Eric cover.

You can hear that last one, as well as a few others, at Bahamas’ MySpace page.