“Steve Mayone writes some of the most beautiful melodies you’ll ever hear. His new album, Sideways Rain, is rife with flowing pop evoking the Beatles and Traveling Wilburys at times, along with some folk-flavored ballads that exude a romantic and bittersweet glow.
It is the work of a career musician who still has much magic left in his trick bag. He touches on survival, loss, politics and renewal. It is an album you will play over and ponder because it has more depth than most of his contemporaries combined.”
–STEVE MORSE, longtime Boston Globe staff critic who now teaches Rock History at Berklee College of Music
Sideways Rain possesses a rare ability to take deeply personal topics and give them a truly universal slant. Only the best can do that, and on the 13 songs here Steve Mayone has managed it with consummate skill.
Maximum Volume Music
A sparkling set of songs that address loss and life.
Paul Kerr, Americanan UK
All the elements of Mayone’s music and musical influences are present in the material, Dylanesque ballads, rootsy Americana and a splash of country thrown in. There’s a depth to the album that goes beyond just mundane storytelling, and not a hint of self pity, which, given the circumstances of the album’s gestation, is no mean feat.
Ian Taylor, R2 magazine
This is outstanding song writing. Sideways Rain may have been birthed in a storm, but it's the album equivalent of the clear skies and calming relief that tend to follow them. This is a wonderful album.
Adam Jenkins, FATEA
Despite the melancholy considerably outweighing the celebratory, Sideways Rain still manages to leave you feeling strangely uplifted and a lot of that is down to Steve’s ability create memorable melodies.
Music Riot
Brooklyn-based Steve Mayone must be tired by now of forever seeing the names of George Harrison and the Travelling Wilburys in his reviews; although that’s some talent to be compared to it must get tiring after a while. While there’s undoubtedly a touch of Harrison’s work scattered throughout this latest collection of songs even Harrison couldn’t keep up with Mayone’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of catchy melodies. Even when Mayone switches influences from a former Beatle to Dylan, who has surely influenced this multi-instrumentalist equally, Mayone injects his own vision into the song to make his work more than just a tribute to those he so obviously admires. It’s a mark of his talent that Mayone can take such sensitive subjects yet dress them in appealing melodies so the end result has an uplifting effect rather than the opposite. There’s little not to like on Sideways Rain but plenty to love.
Pennyblack Music
