The American / Dutch singer / songwriter Michael de Jong once celebrated his startling career in America with an abundance of alcohol and drugs. In the nineties he moved to the Netherlands, got clean and built up a modest success here. He did this with moody and bluesy music on which he told a detailed account of that rough and lost time as an addict. Pure 'case histories' for AA, where as a down
… to earth listener you sometimes tend to think; come on Michael, don't whine. Own fault! On The Great Illusion, De Jong seems to have shifted those demons somewhat to the background in twelve expertly written songs. And that worked out well. Only accompanying himself on guitar and with his lived voice De Jong - musically balancing somewhere between Bob Dylan and Kevin Coyne - sounds less disillusioned than ever. In the song Take It As It Comes (which leans against John Hiatt's Have A Little Faith) he even argues for a more carefree vision of the future. Future enough for De Jong, with an album like this. (MR)more