"Despite its massive length, Gentle Spirit lives up to its title; it's an easy, breezy, endearing listen with plenty of seductive earworms to draw the listener down a sonic rabbit hole and into another world temporarily." In the review for The Guardian, Caroline Sullivan claimed that "Gentle Spirit engagingly takes up where the Graham Nashes and Joni Mitchells left off, with only the odd splash of electronics proving it was made this decade." Concluding the review for NME, Rebecca Schiller stated that "As California dreamin' goes, this is almost as good as heading for the hills, reaching for a hand-tooled native American bong and calling yourself Moon Unit." Uncut leads off its review by introducing Wilson as "the new king of Laurel Canyon". Throughout the course of his review, Uncut'''s James Mulvey states that, "Gentle Spirit illustrates a more prosaic act of creation, in which fastidious study is transformed into compelling new music." Mojo acknowledges Wilson's craftmanship throughout by saying, "The pursuit of authenticity and eye for detail stretches to Wilson's production techniques" as the album was recorded to analog tape. Kathleen Johnson of Vintage Guitar described the album as a "a hippie-soul drenched 80 minutes of folk-psych-rock goodness". The album received high marks in the 2011 End of Year polls as well, including earning #4 in Mojo, #16 in Uncut, #28 in The Guardian''. Track listing All songs written by Jonathan Wilson (except "The Way I Feel" written by Gordon Lightfoot). "Gentle Spirit" – 6:27 "Can We Really Party Today?" – 6:41 "Desert Raven" – 7:58 "Canyon in the Rain" – 6:27 "Natural Rhapsody" – 8:21 "Ballad of the Pines" – 4:00 "The Way I Feel" – 4:07 "Don't Give Your Heart to a Rambler" – 3:47 "Woe Is Me" – 6:22 "Waters Down" – 3:46 "Rolling Universe" – 3:25 "Magic Everywhere" – 6:26 "Valley of the Silver Moon" – 10:32 "Morning Tree" – 6:20 (Bonus Track) "Bohemia" – 6:13 (Bonus Track) Personnel "Gentle Spirit" Jonathan Wilson – All Instruments & Vocals "Can We Really Party Today?" Jonathan Wilson – Vocals, Guitar, Piano, Percussion, Mellotron Colin Laroque – Drums Johnathan Rice – Backing Vocals "Desert Raven" Jonathan Wilson – All Instruments & Vocals "Canyon in the Rain" Jonathan Wilson – All Instruments & Vocals "Natural Rhapsody" Jonathan Wilson – All Instruments & Vocals "Ballad of the Pines" Jonathan Wilson – All Instruments & Vocals Chris Robinson – Backing Vocals