Simon Rettie can narrow his musical influences down to three records – The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Chet Baker’s Chet Baker Sings. His songwriting and singing has been described as the perfect bridge between what was then and what is now – a contemporary singer songwriter yet timeless in his appeal. It’s clearly his signature velvet jazz-tinged voice that creates this sensation. On his debut release, Left Behind, Rettie writes songs about surviving the hard times and sticking around for the good. From the first track, “Impossible”, a simple piano ballad complicated by its alternating warmth and its sadness, to the closing track of “Gravity”, the songs are a catalog of thoughts one has after being left behind in some way and present a singer strong enough to be vulnerable presenting a hard-won wisdom.