New Forrest Whitlow MP3s

By JASON HARPER

Kansas City singer-songwriter Forrest Whitlow moves away from the acoustic folk and toward the acoustic rock on his latest and seventh album, 7.

Shades of Lenny Kravitz and Phantom of the Opera haunt the strings of driving leadoff track “Vanilla Stoli,” while “On My Way to See Aimee Man,” with some saxamaphone fury from Mark Southerland and backwards guitar, catches Paul Simon having a happy hour cocktail with the Zombies. If that makes no sense to you, it’s because your ears didn’t go to the same school mine did. Your ears went to a school where music, poetry and love were outlawed.

But seriously, 7 finds Whitlow playing the lovelorn, slacker poet over sunny, at times psychedelic arrangements bolstered by studio work from lots of midtown musicians, including violinist Laurel Morgan of In the Pines.

MP3: Forrest Whitlow, “Vanilla Stoli”

MP3: Forrest Whitlow, “On My Way to See Aimee Man”