Former Waxwing front man Rocky Votolato returns to the musical fold with Makers, his first album since 2003's excellent Suicide Medicine. Makers is certainly a more Country-Folk affair than any other release he's ever produced (there's hardly an electric guitar to be found here), and he's hearing about it in a unfair and negative way from mainstream critics. Already quite a few publications have gone as far as to call Makers boring, trite and uneventful, but I'm here to tell you differently. It's true that Makers is bare-boned and minimal, (except for the excellent guitar work his brother Cory from The Blood Brothers lays down on "Where We Left Off") but that doesn't make it terrible. In fact, the minimal production just makes it easier to hear what an accomplished songwriter Votolato has become.

On the heartbreaking "Portland Is Leaving," Votolato exclaims "I'm a punch line whose punch-drunk with my fist in a broken mirror…you might ask me 'aren't you dead inside and so damn tired', I'll say 'I have no idea, I'm not sleeping until the dying is over'". And on "Wait Out The Days," Votolato cleverly indicts someone, "The catch-22's are all catching up with you." True, the whole album starts to sound the same after so many songs (acoustic guitar, harmonica, acoustic guitar, lather, rinse, repeat) which does hamper Makers a bit by the time one reaches the finish line, but fans of singer-songwriters like Ryan Adams and Gary Jules will find plenty to relish here.