Imagination

On this 21-minute, six-song EP, South Carolina singer/songwriter Joal Rush isn't quite the insistent pop musician of his 2004 debut CD Delightful Things, but he still aims much more at making accessible pop/rock than many independent musicians, who often make a point of avoiding a commercial sound. Not Rush. The title song has a Beatlesque lilt, and elsewhere he constructs catchy pop/rock arrangements out of the usual rock band elements. In his lyrics, he is equally embracing of the masses, notably on "Stone," a song that reassures the listener with a positive message, and may be directed back at the singer as much as the people he's encouraging. Rush ends with the romantic ballad "You Are," where he accompanies himself with a lone guitar. This is the kind of music that has real possibilities for licensing to television, even if major labels don't seem to be signing artists with Rush's potential mass appeal anymore.