GAMBLES

TRUST (GMBLS)

14/20

Having experienced a year of heartache and personal tragedy which he openly talks about in interviews, Matthew Siskin has been using his Gambles moniker as an avenue for communicating a story that had stayed unexpressed for a long time. Opener Angel demonstrates Siskin’s love for Leonard Cohen, while tracks like New York and Penny For A Grave are anecdotal, poetic and unpolished. It’s as if the process that made the album drained Siskin to the point where he had the songs and little else left. As an album solely composed with Siskin’s voice and guitar, the absence of diversity lets it down to an extent, and maybe Trust would work best in a condensed EP format. But the overriding ethos behind the record is to communicate what needs to be communicated – however long that takes. Trust’s final offering Animal does carry a feeling of closure and conclusiveness. Perhaps we will never hear from Gambles again. Perhaps Trust will leave no permanent mark on audiences whatsoever. But no matter how the story unfolds, this is a candid and unaffected document of Siskin’s personal expression.

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Words: Duncan Harrison