Gentle Spirit is the first official studio album released by Los Angeles artist Jonathan Wilson. It was released in the United Kingdom and Europe on August 8, 2011, and in the United States on September 13, 2011, on Bella Union and received the #4 spot on Mojo Magazine's 2011 Best of Albums of the Year. The album was recorded at Wilson's former studio in Laurel Canyon and mixed at his new studio in Echo Park. Overview Wilson crafted the album at his former studio, Canyonstereo, in Laurel Canyon between tours, album producer jobs, recording sessions and jams, a period in which Wilson collaborated with the likes of Elvis Costello, Chris Robinson, Phil Lesh, Erykah Badu, Benmont Tench, Gary Louris, Vetiver, Dawes and many other notable musicians. While the album was started a few years earlier, Wilson chose not to release Gentle Spirit until 2011. As a result, Gentle Spirit traded among Wilson's friends and family on sharpie-labeled CDRs for several years and in the process, built a large underground following that included many notable musicians, including Jackson Browne, Robbie Robertson and Elvis Costello. As journalist Martin Aston notes in his BBC Music review, "Wilson may be a new name to us but to the cognoscenti of America's alt-roots scene he's a mover and shaker." Not until Wilson was introduced to Simon Raymonde and Bella Union, did he decide to officially release the album. The album's underlying theme has to do with the words of the title track, "Gentle Spirit", about the desensitization caused by daily exposure to mankind's despair. Gentle Spirit discusses taking the time to give humanity a reverence-laden soundtrack of sorts. As Andy Gill of The Independent notes, "This concern, about how to reconcile one's desire for inner peace with our rage at worldly events, runs through the album." Gentle Spirit features all original Wilson compositions, with the exception of his rendition of Gordon Lightfoot's "The Way I Feel". The song "Gentle Spirit" was recorded live during sessions for the BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test 40th Anniversary. The song "Desert Raven" was used to close Tycho's 2016 Burning Man set. Acclaim Gentle Spirit was met with generally favorable reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, this release received an average score of 76, based on 15 reviews. Concluding the review for AllMusic, Thom Jurek claimed that