Description
Blink is the third studio album by the American singer and songwriter Rick Elias, released in the US on Pamplin Music in 1997, and on ICC in the UK. The album was produced by Rick Elias and mixed by J. R. McNeely.
Featuring guest musicians like Phil Madeira (organ and accordion), Tom Howard (piano), John Catchings (cello), and Aaron Smith of The 77s fame (drums), the latter a fellow member from Rich Mullins’ Ragamuffin Band.
Rick Elias’s early ’90s album Confessions was a great Christian album in a pretty bland bunch, back then. After his second Ten Stories he disappeared before reappearing as a Ragamuffin with Rich Mullins and then more recently as a writer for Tom Hanks’ moving That Thing You Do and producer of Split Level’s glo.bal. ‘Blink’ is a kind of work in progress, released privately as tour product but, oh how good it is. In the first few songs, especially «Blink» and «I Need A Hole». Elias sounds like Karl Wallinger and I guess if his Tom Hanks contributions were early ’60s Beatles then this is post Sgt Pepper. The tenderness of «If You Believed» is so delicate, the yearning of «Prayer Of The Saints» aches, the rock in «God Inc» is resistant and «Man Of Reputation» is as good a portrait of Jesus that any harmonica driven song ever was. If this is just a gap filler I can’t wait for the real thing. [Steve Stockman, Cross Rhythms, August 1997]
The songs of Blink were never meant to be shared. After being burned twice by tepid response to his recordings, Rick Elias worked behind-the-scenes in Christian music to support his family as a producer, writer, and side-man. Over the years, late at night, he’d create a little, just for himself. The result is a series of songs that might find a home in the roots rock or alternative country genres, or with any respectable group of singer/songwriters that aren’t afraid of electric guitars. A rich bed of keyboard chords and Phil Madeira‘s loopy concertina, a host of guitars and backup singers subtly support Elias’s world-weary, world-wise tenor crooning. This album returns to the grittiness of the first one, Rick Elias and the Confessions, but it’s a more intentional, well-produced, carefully controlled grittiness, using the stronger production evident on his second album, Ten Confessions, to better effect. Like 6’4″ Elias himself, Blink is an angular, ungainly collection of unpredictable numbers, very likeable despite their rough edges. [Linda T. Stonehocker, The Phantom Tollbooth, 1998]
Tollbooth: You’ve got a new CD.
Rick Elias: That came out of nowhere. I didn’t really plan on doing another record ever, but I wound up with the opportunity to compile some of the stuff I’ve been working on over the last few years that I never had any intention of releasing. They were just things I’d done in my basement. I knew they probably wouldn’t wind up on anybody else’s record, so in a way, I guess they were made with the purest motives you can think of. They were just made for me, without any intention of anyone else ever hearing them. But the opportunity came to compile them all together, and I did, then did a couple of other recordings that fill out the collection a little bit. It just came out in the U.K. and will be coming out here in the States in September. [Excerpt from an interview with Rick Elias featured in The Phantom Tollbooth, posted on Tollbooth’s website on July 5, 1997]
> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/blink/1129669372)
CD tracklist:
01. Blink – 5:13
02. Love Will See The Rose – 4:09
03. Prodigal Son – 4:25
04. Hole In My Heart – 5:09
05. Pilgrims – 3:56
06. God Inc. – 4:12
07. Streets Of Rome – 4:09
08. Prayers Of The Saints – 5:00
09. If You Believed – 3:51
10. The More Things Change – 3:21
Note: The track “Pilgrims” is not included on the European version.
CREDITS. Produced by Rick Elias. Engineered by Dave Jahnsen with additional engineering by David Schober and Gregg Jampol. Mixed by J. R. McNeely assisted by Matt Weeks and Todd Gunnerson. Mastered by Hank Williams. All songs written by Rick Elias.
Musicians: Rick Elias (Piano, Electric Rhodes Piano, Harmonica, Melodica, Mandolin, Guitars, Bass, Percussion, Programming), Linda Elias (Percussion), Tom Howard (Piano on track 10), John Catchings (Cello on track 5 and 10), Phil Madeira (Organ on track 1 and 6, Accordion/Squeezebox on track 5 and 6, Tin Whistle/Penny Whistle on track 5), Danny O’Lannerghty (Double Bass on track 5), Jackie Street (Bass on track 7), Regie Hamm (Drums on track 1 and 6, Percussion on track 1 and 6, Piano on track 5), Aaron Smith (Drums on track 2 and 3), Bob Sale (Percussion on track 7). Backing Vocals: Linda Elias, Regie Hamm, Rick Elias.
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