Magic Music

Magic Music 

URL: http://magicmusicband.com/ 

There’s something for everyone on Magic Music’s first album. Very few debuts in any genre have the sort of quiet confidence that’s clear in this Colorado band’s songwriting. They sound very much like what they are – longtime friends and respected peers in the Americana scene who have come together to write and record some of the most unique traditional music to emerge in recent history. The band first formed in 1969 and enjoyed some popularity they parlayed into performances alongside legendary performers like Cat Stevens and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band among others. Those glimmers of success never erupted into full on fires and, as a result, the band called it quits in 1976. The friendships of the men involved never ended and they continued to meet for reunions where they played for family, friends, and admirers. A new opportunity for the band to record their first album came about in 2011 and over four years were spent assembling the material, recording, refining, and soliciting contributions from talented peers like Little Feat’s Bill Payne and bassist/producer Jimmy Haslip.  

They put their best foot forward with the one-two punch of “Bring the Morning Down” and “Bright Sun Bright Rain”. They are highly credible Americana numbers featuring mandolin, acoustic guitar, and flute among other touches, but they are equally melodic and have a surprising pop sensibility that immediately hits listeners. “Mole’s Stumble” is a well written and highly finessed performance without a single sliver of daylight in the playing. This is chemistry and it can’t be taught. The players intuitively respond to each other and nothing sounds unnatural or slapped together for the sake of effect. “Gandy Dancer” has impressive intricacy without ever seeming like some self-indulgent virtuoso trip and further illustrates the last point about how well this six piece plays together. Their understanding of what the songs need apply to their vocal approach as well and this track has a graceful take on the singing.  

There’s an assortment of textures working throughout “Carolina Wind” and the storytelling strengths of the song are the crowning touch on its appeal. The vocalists bring such attention to detail that the phrasing dramatizes every line. Nothing that has come before, however, prepares listeners for the excellence of “Eldorado Canyon”. This song is the apogee of their efforts and has a wealth of specific imagery and detail for the audience without ever obscuring the potential for listeners to connect with its experience. The guitar work is particularly good here and contributes much to its overall worth. 

“Hayin’” has some interesting musical turns, but it’s as close as the album comes to pure entertainment. It seems a little put on in certain lyrical respects because of how hard it tries to convey a country atmosphere, but it doesn’t prohibit enjoyed the track. “Our Song: Colorado Rockies” is a rich ode from the band to their home state and listeners will be hard pressed to not like this track. Their sincerity comes through with such vivid clarity that it redeems any self-consciousness that might have otherwise been present. Everything about this debut seems honest as a heart attack, often deceptively simple, and full of real love for the forms they excel in performing.

8 out of 10 stars 

YOU TUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxKsAV_6cLt6zzexBR4MHxw 

Raymond Burris

Redbelt - Beautiful Surround

Redbelt - Beautiful Surround 

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/redbeltmusic/ 

The secret of why young men are attracted to guitar rock is no secret at all. The physicality of rock guitar, in all its sub-genres, remains one of the abiding staples of 20^th and 21^st century popular music. Some bands prefer to bludgeon listeners over the head with the forcefulness of their playing while others, like Milwaukee’s RedBelt, marry that power with melodic virtues that deepen the impact they have on a potential audience. Their debut album Beautiful Surround is a welcome revisit of the power hard-hitting rock music gains when it’s hooked up to melody-fueled songwriting and exceptional vocals. There are thirteen songs on this first release and not a single one of them lack the inspiration needed to get their point across to audiences. This is music of the body, but there’s ample intelligence behind this work as well and an undeniable spirit that gives each song its own specific energy.

“Crossed Wires” might seem, on an initial listen, to be all aggression and precious little nuance. However, set aside the clashing guitars, and you’ll hear a band who pays as much attention to the melodic possibilities inherent to the tune as they do to their riffing and volume setting. Lead singer Kevin Brown, also the band’s second guitarist, has a strong voice for this sort of material and the band’s penchant for harmony vocals is a surprising turn in a genre that doesn’t often go in for such things. “American Mercy” is even better. This is the first example of the intelligence present in their work and mentioned earlier in the review. Multiple listens will reveal more and more to the audience about how good this track really is, but there are further surprises in store soon after. Lead guitarist Mike Mann whips out some satisfyingly nasty slide guitar on the song “Shoot It All the Time” and the rhythm section establishes the deepest groove on the album that gives him a great foundation from which he can singe the listener’s ears.  

The middle of the album, however, is relatively content to mine the punk rock vein. Songs like “Sweet Release” and “30 Seconds” largely desert the band’s earlier concern with melody, but they still have big choruses that will capture any listener’s attention. “Cold” is an unusual track on the album that plays, frankly, like the band’s clearest commercial track with an unbelievably hooky chorus that the band wisely revisits a number of times throughout the song. The final half of the album has two of Beautiful Surround’s best songs. The first, “Throw Away”, represents the fullest realization on the release of their desire to bring melody, longstanding rock tropes, and punk rock attitude into the same package. “Bones”, however, is much more overtly theatrical than any of the previous songs and shows a pleasing side to the band that earlier songs don’t hint at. This is a powerful debut from a band that’s quite obviously energized by the chance to get their songwriting out on a national level. They are talented players and songwriters alike. RedBelt’s Beautiful Surround sets the stage for this four piece to have a long and potentially brilliant run.  

9 out of 10 stars

YOU TUBE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9K_azcXILc 

Gilbert Mullis

Jemima James - When You Get Old

Jemima James - When You Get Old 

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/Jemima-James-1423169781256109/

The thirteen song When You Get Old marks only Jemima James’ second album in a thirty seven year span. Her first recording, At Longview Farm, is being released in conjunction with it and it displays a clear evolution from her youthful 1979 compositions to When You Get Old’s much more stripped back, emotionally sophisticated songwriting. She has become a singer of great understated nuance in that time as well. Many of the songs on When You Get Old have a strong blues pedigree and James proves herself quite capable of flexing some gritty muscle in that direction without ever sounding unconvincing or else like she’s straining for effect. Her smiling, sleepy vocals on some of the more country-ish numbers stands in sharp contrast to the seriousness of some of the lyrics but, like you can with blues, a certain amount of this pose can be considered as part of the smiling to keep from crying school of singing. She has great emotiveness in her voice and a canny talent for winding her singing tightly into the arrangement of each song. 

While there’s some blues influence in this album, the most important strains laced through this music are decidedly country and folk in origin. James doesn’t have an overpowering voice, but none of the material on this album requires vocal pyrotechnics. Instead, When You Get Old focuses much more on intimacy than strength. The title song opens things and illustrates these points quite well. James, as a songwriter, has a masterful way of delivering weighty sentiments with smiling aplomb. She caresses each line out of her vocal chords with sensitivity and never adopts an aggressive vocal posture. The second song “Magician” emphasizes this strength. She revels in the literary possibilities that the subject matter affords to her and gives listeners quite an inspired vocal without, once again, ever overwhelming the listener.

This song first philosophy continues for the duration of the album. “If I Could Only Fly” will resonate with many listeners because James writes so well and, as a vocalist, completely inhabits the imaginative landscape she creates with her songs. “If It’s the End”, one of the album’s best songs, is perhaps the pinnacle of her ability to marry low-key traditional country music with nuanced lyrical material. The words, standing on their own, are serviceable and have great strength, but it’s James’ ability to create subtext through her phrasing that distinguishes songs like this from the rest of the pack. “Sensible Shoes” revisits the opening song from At Longview Farm to great effect. The full-band arrangement that powered the original is forsaken here in favor of the same bare bones approach that characterizes the whole album. 

“Golden Boy” is a solid traditional country song with bluesy color shooting through the arrangement. It’s a lyrically affectionate song, easily one of the album’s most affectionate numbers, and James delivers it with great phrasing while still avoiding any overt sentimentality. “Tennessee Blues” continues her exploration of classic country musical textures infused with a blues influence and the lyric, quite simple on the surface, gains much from another strong James vocal. The restrained mid-tempo shuffle of “One and Only” has great drumming and another top shelf performance from James’ collaborators. The album’s final track, “Nothing New”, brings this artful album to a satisfying conclusion and allows James a chance to perform a completely solo piece. When You Get Old carries underrated power and panache in the same streamlined package and anyone who loves folk, country, and a little blues will undoubtedly find this to be one of the year’s best efforts in that vein. 

8 out of 10 stars.

I-TUNES: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/when-you-get-old/id1164766266 

Montey Zike 

Martin X. Petz - Broken Man

Martin X. Petz - Broken Man 

REVERBNATION: https://www.reverbnation.com/martinxpetz 

The best songwriters resist pigeonholing. It might be easy for the uninformed to give Martin X. Petz’s latest full length album Broken Man a single listen and slap an ill-fitting label on it as faith-based or intended for adult oriented radio play. The source and appeal of this nine song work, however, is much broader. These are songs that attempt to dramatize Petz’s own interior struggles, but they just as often look outside the confines of self and connect wonderfully with facets of our lives that, undoubtedly, resonate with a wide swath of potential listeners. His lyrical content avoids inaccessible or high-flown moments of pseudo poetry, but make no mistake that Petz isn’t a superior writer when compared to many of his contemporaries in the field. There’s great intelligence and literacy driving these songs. He emerges from this album not just as a gifted songwriter and musician, but as a storyteller with a voice that’s an ideal vehicle for communicating with his audience. 

The title song incorporates a full band, but their touch is light. Petz keeps this track clipped and doesn’t waste a word or note, but the atmosphere of the song keeps the energy level at an engaging medium. It’s a credit to his songwriting skill that Petz never lets things get too overwrought, but his plain-spoken depiction of despair will be an affecting listening experience for many. “Noble Blues” takes on some of the full band trappings heard on the first song but tempers them somewhat. The result is a much more intimate approach for the song’s first quarter before Petz opts for ramping up the musical stakes during the remaining duration. The album’s third track “Fall” is constructed around a tasteful half shuffle tempo accentuated by understated drums. His vocal shows all of the care and sensitivity for phrasing apparent on the album’s first two songs and there’s some tasty lead guitar here as well. 

A classic count-in opens “Heart & Home” which, as the title implies, celebrates the connections that sustain our lives. The arrangement is full of the sound musical decisions and compelling playing that characterizes the album as a whole, but it does more than that. The song has a great uplifting swing that picks listeners up and keeps them engaged throughout the song. “Count” reaffirms the virtues that guides much of the album’s songwriting with a clean, uncluttered track primarily centered around Petz’s evocatively recorded vocals, his guitar, and light percussion. “They Say (You’ll Know)” has much of the same breezy confidence heard on the album’s best songs and a light shuffle pace that keeps things moving without ever forcing them along. Broken Man’s final song, “Chained”, has much of the same musical focus characterizing earlier tracks like “Count” and relies on intimacy to make its case to the listener.  

There’s deceptive simplicity here, but Petz is a songwriter who realizes the virtue of a song having no more than it needs to get its message/point across to the listener. The nine songs on Broken Man do not pretend to remake the wheel artistically – instead, Petz is a fine product of the singer/songwriter school of popular music and excels at giving his audience entertaining musical material along with substantive words that will reach and touch many hearts.  

9 out of 10 stars 

CD BABY: http://www.cdbaby.com/artist/MartinXPetz 

Lydia Hillenburg

Django Mack - ‘Round Christmas

Django Mack - ‘Round Christmas 

REVERBNATION: https://www.reverbnation.com/djangomack 

You can help but admire someone pushing blues music so convincingly and artistically as Django Mack. It’s more than that though. Over the course of two albums, Mack has carved out his own unique niche in the genre as a creative lyricist who has co-opted the lexicon of blues and Americana music for his own uses. There are often some surprising poetic turns that elevate his words over the typical efforts from this music and Mack’s delivery completely inhabits the music. The newest release from this Sam Francisco based performer is the song “’Round Christmas”, a dramatic and emotionally heavy song teamed with a bonus track entitled “Big Black Dog”. They have a lot of punch, but they hit different areas on the listener. Mack has ensured both songs receive even-handed production that underlines their strengths and keeps things in balance. Everything comes across with startling clarity.  

The single “’Round Christmas” will sink the mood of many listeners, but it’s a facile way of hearing it. This is a very theatrical blues, not in a bad or hackneyed way, but instead it turns the narrator’s personal drama into a quasi-epic where everything is rendered in near life or death terms. Images of ruin and desolation litter the lyric. Mack manages a number of graceful verbal turns and his phrasing takes full advantage of his talents in this area. The arrangement is propelled forward by tasteful but steady drumming with a couple of guitars working their magic over top. The six strings have contrasting sounds and give it a sort of signature edge that makes it different. Mack’s influences have often been referred to as performers like Leon Redbone, Tom Waits, and Leonard Cohen, but the funereal emotiveness he summons for this song hits hard and never seems overwrought or imitative.  

He covers familiar ground in the genre with the second song, but pulls it off with every bit of the style that makes “’Round Christmas” sound nothing like many modern offerings in Americana music. “Big Black Dog” doesn’t pretend to have the same seriousness of subject matter and it revels in its humor. The inspired blues piano vamps and tosses in rave up after rave up without ever losing its handle on following the song. Mack and some backing singers give a performance that’s equal parts skill and pure, joyful gusto. This is a song that’s having fun from the moment it hits until the last note plays.  

Go back and check out his two albums to date if you don’t already know. Django Mack is as first class as it comes with this style of music and easily would have occupied a place alongside his idols in another generation. He’s that good and shows no signs of peaking yet. “’Round Christmas” and “Big Black Dog” entertain audiences in very different ways, but the final satisfying effect on listeners remains the same and this sort of musical and songwriting quality will keep them coming back for more.

YOU TUBE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8sF4YgT3uU 

Charles Hatton

Kelly McGrath - You and Me Today

Kelly McGrath - You and Me Today 

URL: http://www.kellymcgrathmusic.com/ 

Despite the omnipresence of it in our lives, physical and otherwise, very little of our art concerns itself with examining death. Invariably, when a songwriter or poet turns their attention to the subject, it’s from the point of view Kelly McGrath adopts in her latest single “You and Me Today”. McGrath sings from the point of view of a survivor, one of those left behind to pick up the pieces after a close loved one dies, and her stirring performance never risks the hackneyed or overwrought. Instead, she approaches this event in song with the same grace the reality of her loss demanded from here in real life. Everything about this song rings true. There is a sense of hard-won wisdom emanating from the mid-tempo arrangement and the plaintive tone of loss infusing McGrath’s voice is unmistakable. She doesn’t subject the listener to a single note longer than the song needs and it’s a little astonishing that she manages to so comprehensively touch on a deeply emotional experience within three minutes eight seconds.  

It is remarkably patient for such a relatively brief song. One expects that such a profoundly requires a larger stage to communicate its enormity, but McGrath’s less is more approach belies more incremental ambitions. “You and Me Today” succeeds, in no small part, thanks to how well it understands its listeners. The rising and ebbing of human emotions, especially after such a transformative event, mimics the lightly handled orchestration so evident in this track. It starts off in muted mood, McGrath’s voice accompanied by acoustic guitar, and slowly climbs in intensity. The rhythm section gives the song a sturdy skeleton that McGrath’s other musical cohorts surround the skeleton with sparkling color that nonetheless has a darker, moody side. The mid-tempo pace that the song takes is ideally suited for both the subject matter and McGrath’s voice. 

The lyrics are tightly written and, like the arrangement, never waste any energy with extra material that means nothing to the song. The focus is laudable. She plumbs to the depths of this experience without ever relying on familiar turns in the form – she never plays to the audience’s pity, doesn’t over-sentimentalize her relationship with her father, and fills the track with a great mix of the personal and general. Instead, she is intent on relaying the reality of this experience with clear, startlingly direct language that never cheats the listener and tries to gaze into the face of this grievous change to her life without ever blinking or flinching. Her attempt is wholly successful and quite admirable. 

Anyone who has lost a loved parent will understand the pain in this single. “You and Me Today” is a song that sees the connection between father and daughter as unalterable, even by the grave, and while the song isn’t a catalog of platitudes for the deceased, it is a remarkable tribute to the enduring power that certain figures hold over our hearts and lives. As a preview of her forthcoming album, Kelly McGrath couldn’t have re-introduced herself to the music world in a better way.  

I-TUNES: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/you-and-me-today-single/id1160918660

David Shouse

TNT Music - Pieces

TNT Music - Pieces 

FACEBOOK:  https://www.facebook.com/TnTsongs

Collaborations either catch fire or fall flat. It’s hard to identify the needed elements for combustion because they vary so wildly from context to context. Certain artists require particular dynamics for a creative partnership to flower. Other performers/artists are completely adverse to these partnerships from the outset. The founding of websites like Soundcloud and others of that sort have provided invaluable forums for collaborative-minded artists. Tim Toz and Joy Tolbert, long time veterans of the music industry, initially met through Soundcloud and soon struck up a rapport. That conviviality has resulted in over a dozen songs written and their latest release, “Pieces”, reflects the growing depth of their team work. This could scarcely be a more complete recording – production, songwriting, arranging, playing, and vocals are all attended to with a professionalism benefitting the seriousness of the presentation. TNT Music moderate their ambition – this is exactly what it purports to be and no more. However, it is something spectacularly entertaining and embodying real depth. 

The lyrical content is well suited to the music. It’s for sure that the duo isn’t writing about some new subject never before broached in the annals of pop history, but Tolbert is a deceptively simple lyricist who can quite clearly draw from her own personal experiences to craft a compelling emotional and quasi-conventional narrative for her listeners. Accessible lyrics are key, but they never dumb them down so much that their audience will feel pandered to. She gives everything a gusty reading too and seems almost supernaturally attuned to the spirit of each passage. Vocalists with such emotive deep who consistently give well-rounded consideration to the song are always going to stick with listeners no matter what technology or new fad rushes in to seemingly replace basic human interplay.  

The music opens in a very brash fashion with Toz handling a variety of instrumental chores, but after a short introduction, things become much more sedate and laid back during the verses. Toz and Tolbert work extremely well together, but Toz’s effortless ability to steadily elevate the sonic tension contributes to making this song a real piece of musical magic. Despite containing no exhortations, no call to arms or storm the ramparts, “Pieces” has a surprising anthemic quality sure to capture the attention of many. The song never runs on too long either – TNT Music are looking to move listeners and seize their imaginations, so not one note or word is wasted in their effort to do so. 

This is collaboration that’s caught fire. TNT Music stands out from the pack of four piece bands and larger thanks to the utter sincerity of their work, the profound talents at their disposal, and the steady confidence to create music full of melody and experience built to stand the test of time. These are the sort of fundamental truths behind all great acts and bands. TNT Music has a firm handle on that with their latest single “Pieces”.  

AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Pieces-TNT/dp/B01KVMTEC6

Montey Zike

Jemima James - At Longview Farm

Jemima James - At Longview Farm 

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/Jemima-James-1423169781256109/ 
 

The ten song release At Longview Farm is a thirty-seven year old recording that only sees its first distribution this year. James, a descendant of iconic American writers Henry and William James, worked at Longview Farm Studio located in Western Massachusetts during the late 1970’s and got to know some of the most iconic artistic figures of that era during her employment there. The Rolling Stones, Arlo Guthrie, and John Belushi, among many others, spent time working on projects there and James took advantage of her good fortune by further honing her own artistic skills during this period and, as well, recording what was surely intended to be her debut album. The songs on At Longview Farm have commercial value, but they are also the product of an artist with a shrewd understanding of the tradition forming the bedrock of her technique and the ability to transform it into something uniquely her own. 

Her ability to bring commercial elements into play within this context is particularly valuable to the album’s success. It’s evident from the first song, “Sensible Shoes”, that her talents for folk rock never prevent her from crafting material capable of reaching an even wider audience. Other songs like the second track, “Havana Cigar”, are cut from a much more traditional cloth and emphasize storytelling elements in their lyrical content while still exhibit enough folk rock appeal that it escapes the land of the purist folk and reaches for something much broader and more inclusive. “Easy Come, Easy Go” shows off her commercial talents at their near zenith on the record and zips past the listen with confidence and light-footed musicality, but it isn’t a vapid piece and makes a real impact on the listener. There’s a much more global feel on “Esperate” that goes far beyond the constrained limits laid down by Americana forms and James handles the singing of such exotic material with the same adept style she exhibits on the more traditional textures.  

The tandem of “One More Rodeo” and its follow-up “Jackson County” bring the album’s compelling contrasts in sharp relief. The former is another breezy folk rock track spiced up with some pop strains, but it isn’t lightweight in any respect, just more musically exuberant. The latter song “Jackson County” revisits the storytelling virtues heard in earlier songs like “Havana Cigar”, but it does so with a much wider scope and greater attention to detail than before. “Billy Baloo” has a similar approach that concentrates, this time out, on giving a believable voice to the song’s subject and succeeds quite well thanks to both the nuance in James’ writing and in her vocal. The tensions working within the songs on At Longview Farm are perfectly orchestrated and there’s never any sense of those influences leading her down any artistic blind alleys. The songwriting also escapes any hint of self-indulgence, a remarkable feat alone for a first time recording artist who, undoubtedly, hoped to impress listeners. It’s the abundant skill and cool confidence that makes this such a pleasurable experience.  

9 out of 10 stars.

I-TUNES: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/jemima-james/id5125882 

David Shouse

Leo Harmonay - The Blink of an Eye

Leo Harmonay - The Blink of an Eye 

URL: http://www.lharmonic.com/

Few albums come as sincere and straight-forward as this. It is certainly common in the folk music genre to find a spartan approach to both songwriting and production; in some ways, brevity is one of the form’s pre-requisites. However, simplicity alone is not artful. The simplicity must be shaped, given form, and above all else, imbued with more than a touch of the self whose hands are molding it into a statement of some sort. Leo Harmonay has the technical chops to pull off anything he wants to do in the genre; his first album, Somewhere Over the Hudson, conclusively and quickly established that. His second album, The Blink of an Eye, does something very different. It shows him to be a recording artist and writer in full command of his powers and, for whom, simplicity is a by-product of knowing exactly what he wants to say and how to put it for his listeners. This sort of certainty is a pleasure to hear from anyone. Conviction plays well. 

The conviction doesn’t gradually emerge. It’s apparent in even the introduction to his opening song, “Up to You”. Stormy guitar and accompanying drums come in and briefly swell before dispersing. The song begins in earnest with a boot stomp charged tempo while acoustic and electric guitar trade complementary melody lines. It varies little from this course and Harmonay delivers an impassioned vocal with the arrangement that plays to its musical strengths. “River Dancer” is a much more obviously structured song with a bit of idiosyncratic character, but it’s also much more of a straight down the middle folk song than the opener ever intends to be. Another idiosyncratic side of the songwriting emerges on the song “Washing Myself Clean”, but it also draws from a deep well of spiritually-inspired imagery that connects well with personal reflection. 

Harmonay dives into the blues once again on “Gone Are the Days” and its layered instrumental attack shows a great deal more obvious sophistication than on the earlier “Up to You”. Harmonay’s vocals are among his best here, particularly on the chorus. “In the Morning Light” is about as far from his rootsy influences that Harmonay goes on this album thanks to the rock and roll attitude heard in its use of electric guitar, but he doesn’t continue in that vein from here. Instead, the next song “Dirty River Town” is the clearest folk song in the collection and resists any temptation to expand its musical aims. Harmonay’s vocal here is excellent as well and his phrasing deserves most of the praise. His final two full songs are the title number and “The Joy in Our Sadness”. Both are lovely and deeply wise creations with as much musical merit as lyrical excellence.  They are also the album’s longest tracks, but there’s never a second when Harmonay sounds like he’s bitten off more than he can chew. Instead, The Blink of an Eye has a wide-reaching steadiness derived from the confident performances he gives of each song. He clearly spent a lot of time readying this material for recording and eventual release. The result is a second album that far exceeds his fine debut and hints at even greater glories to come. 

9 out of 10 stars 

I-TUNES: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/leo-harmonay/id975870585 

David Shouse

 

Jamie Kent - All-American Mutt

Jamie Kent - All-American Mutt 

URL: http://jamiekent.com/home 

It is unfair to slap any sort of label on Jamie Kent’s third full length album All-American Mutt. This isn’t simply Americana, but there’s parts of that. Kent, instead, just deserves the moniker of “musician”. His influences clearly cut across a variety of borders, both compositional and purely stylistic and he’s able to vocally inhabit a number of different skins. Kent has been playing with the same musical partners for a number of years and two hundred plus live shows every year for the last few years has bolstered an already extant chemistry between the players. The name on the release might be one man, but they never play like they are merely a vehicle for Kent’s songwriting. Instead, this sounds like a band, live on the floor, and making even more of these ten songs thanks to their knowing interplay. 

The title song drives that point home fast. It sounds so effortless, like it flows out of Kent in a continuous wave, and there’s a confidence working here that has all of the rough edges smoothed out and comforts the listener instead of confronting them with their differences. Kent’s memorable chorus drives home the song’s ultimate point. “Look Up” is handled with deft, understated sophistication and builds its success from a restrained arrangement and lyrical content most adults will have no trouble connecting with even if they haven’t personally experienced a moment like this. “Home Again” could have sank under the weight of melodrama but, instead, it achieves a remarkable cinematic quality thanks to the specificity of the song’s details and Kent’s vocal creating a true flesh and blood character for listeners to care about. 

The sculpted acoustic guitar lines and lyrical vocal from Kent on the track “Safe” distinguish it as one of All-American Mutt’s standout songs. It has a perfect length and achieves just the right emotional pitch without ever seeming too purple or overwrought. The final two ballads on the album, however, are the highlights of how sensitive Kent can be as a songwriter and performer. The first of the two, “Red Rover”, teams Kent with the vocal talents of  Michaela Anne and the pairing provides a perfect accompaniment to carefully rendered backing track that the band provides in support. The last song “Embrace the Disaster” is, arguably, the apogee of Kent’s songwriting on this album. It feels like a track when Kent has found his largest scar and feels determined to rip away the scab so a different kind of healing can begin. Despite the delicate reading he gives the track, it is full of pain balanced by the soft and yielding voice of second singer Alyssa Bonagura. These two final moments on an album filled with memorable outings put a certain flair on the conclusion that its beginning didn’t hint at. All-American Mutt is a third album of entertaining depth and sets Kent’s stage for an even brighter future.  

YOU TUBE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx6a-CxfCh4

9 out of 10 stars 

Pamela Bellmore

John Hickman – Remnants

John Hickman – Remnants

 

Primary URL: http://www.johnhickmanmusic.com/

 

Hailing from the Northwest, John Hickman put his dreams of full-time musical glory on hold for many years while enjoying a lucrative career as an aerospace engineer. Shortly after 2010, Hickman bowed out of his profession and took an early retirement so he might have a chance to chase after his long delayed dreams. Hickman, since his 2011 debut, has released a number of singles to considerable acclaim and attention in the indie music community, but the release of his first full length album Remnants takes things a notch higher. This is a work of enormous pop sensibilities and artistic ambition. The best thing about Hickman, in the final respect, is that he’s never pretentious about his presentation. Despite the ground he covers on Remnants, the songwriting never meanders or succumbs to overkill.  

There’s plenty of chances for Hickman to overindulge himself, but he uniformly resists. One example of his taste and restraint is the song “Cascade”. For such a gentle title, one might expect a moderate toned or mid-tempo piece, but Hickman overturns expectations from the outset. The drum and synth introduction is ripped straight from the eighties/early nineties progressive rock handbook, but the song’s unique lyric turns and Hickman’s distinctive presence on vocals make it far from imitative. Hickman hits listeners with a blast of pure rock dynamics on the track “Escape”. His inventiveness as a songwriter and willingness to confound even the shakiest of expectations is on display here. Some listeners, with a song title like this, might expect the band to serve up something frantic, uptempo, but Hickman’s “Escape” sounds like it’s composed under pressure and full of fire.

“Paris Is Burning” is one of the album’s first half-turns, at least, into the ballad form and introduces listeners to that side of his musical talent with its solid writing and unshakable performance. Hickman’s confidence remains high and unflappable throughout the album, but instead of prompting him to toss these songs off like asides, the confidence focuses his efforts and makes the performances often quite transcendent.  “Remnants of the Human Race” finds Hickman engaging a little social commentary, but his gifts as a lyricist make the experience much lighter than it might have otherwise played. One of the album’s real sleepers, in terms of quality, is “Soiled Dove”. The song does a superb job of capturing the essence of a character with only a few well chosen broad strokes and the music complements the lyric perfectly.

 

“Talk” is, perhaps, the album’s most direct nod to the eighties’ progressive rock and sounds like Hickman listened to ample amount of prime Asia. His voice doesn’t quite have the lower register gravitas of John Wetton, but he isn’t merely a musician with an ear for good melodies, but understands how to sing them as well. The ballads compromising the album’s final lap have a strongly cinematic atmosphere and a gradually escalating grandeur that Hickman’s voice matches well. Among them, “What Have You Done?” scales the highest peak among a group of other exemplary tracks.  

9 out of 10 stars 

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/johnhickmanmusic/ 

Shannon Cowden

Alessandro Coli - I Betcha

Alessandro Coli - I Betcha 

URL: http://www.alessandrocoliofficial.com/

The power and intelligence of Alessandro Coli’s latest single “I Betcha” is a testament to a young artist’s commitment to continued growth, but it is so much more. It’s also a strongly personal statement about the hurt a human heart can feel when they invested their emotions into caring about someone who, in the end, casts them off and reveals themselves as unfeeling towards their caring. It’s a memorable dance track that has great artfulness rather than a basic thud and crash so often associated with the genre’s crasser and more obvious acts. Coli’s artfulness is an enormous reason for his past success and the quality of this latest release. He’s attached himself to top notch and recognized production talent that clearly knows how to present his voice and songwriting in the best possible light, but he’s not an inflated talent benefitting from some behind the scenes fader pushing champion. Instead, Alessandro Coli gives listeners conclusive proof that the genre’s future endurance lies with performers like himself rather than the fly by night performers who aim for the lowest common denominator each time and keep their eyes exclusively on the money.  

It has a perfect length. No dance song should really ever run longer than four minutes and “I Betcha” barely clears three minutes. The amount of time keeps things properly focused and reduces any chance for self-indulgence which, ultimately, is a killer for dance music. Coli and his collaborators bring a focus to dance songwriting that’s unusual for its balance of intensity and practically kaleidoscopic entertainment value. It is a very colorful and completely electronic track, but forget any preconceived notions you may have about the sterility of electronic music. It’s a cliché dating back the initial popularization of keyboards and synthesizers in modern music and technology has progressed by leaps and bounds since that era. The music powering “I Betcha” has warmth and moves with all the naturalness of stringed instruments and the structure of the song has that same organic quality.  

It’s the vocals that truly bring everything to life. Coli has a strong connection with the music and never fails to take advantage of the music’s rhythm. His attentiveness to the music pays off by bringing amping up the song’s physicality considerably. He really carries off the lyrics with an offhanded charm that short circuit the negative sentiment he harbors towards the lady who hurt him. Part of what makes this song such a delicious listening experience is the smirking glee he takes in telling off his ex, but he’s never heavy handed enough to make the hearing of such emotions uncomfortable or dull.  

This is a powerful follow up to his debut that shows Alessandro Coli isn’t a performer interested in revisiting the same song in an assortment of different forms. He means business in his search for a wider audience and that requires raising the bar with each successive release. “I Betcha” fits the bill and more.  

I-TUNES: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/alessandro-coli/id399230712

 

Aaron Ellis 

Phantom Phunk - Arboles Ossific

Phantom Phunk - Arboles Ossific 

URL: http://www.phantomphunk.com 

You haven’t heard anything like this in 2016 and likely won’t again until the band decides to release another album. Phantom Phunk are inhabiting a corner of the musical universe that is all their own, boasting obvious influences, but never sounding imitative and transmuting those influences into music and lyrical content that turns longstanding formulas on their head through the creative use of music and fresh imagery. The assortment of tropes, clichés, and misguided attempts for radio play that mark albums from similarly minded peers pale in comparison to the freewheeling creativity on this release. Phantom Phunk come out of the gates roaring on Arboles Ossific and never look back as they sweep the listeners through different sides of a wide-spanning musical imagination that irrepressibly takes flight.  

It is impossible to deny the energy packed inside “Snowy in Florida”. The song doesn’t overstay its welcome, but in the relatively brief time it is playing, Phantom Phunk throws everything but the kitchen sink at listeners with structure, attitude, and a head-down determination to perform their music in the most idiosyncratic way possible. Many of the changes come when the band seemingly stops on a dime and moves in a completely different direction without missing a beat and, while the lyrical content might be a little brief, the combination of its few words and the media clips embedded into the arrangement firmly place it in the progressive category. “The Unheard Spirit Symphony” has much of the same commitment to challenging the listener, but the band’s musical attack is always geared towards entertaining the listener whilst still satisfying the artists’ creative needs. “Gateways” strips the band’s rock attack down to its kinetic and spartan best with a simple, insistent tempo and sparking guitar lines that never overreach.

“Hey There” has a similar slant to “Gateways” but is much more solidly traditional than its earlier counterpart. The band is clearly grasping for a classic rock vibe here and achieves it without ever sounding too studied or self-conscious. The muted and gray beauty of “brother’s Keeper” musically embodies the lyrical mood and, while the words aren’t that long, they show the same taste and sophistication to put every line on trial and eliminate any unneeded verbiage. Arboles Ossific’s only instrumental “Distant Kaleidoscopes” has a soft peddled psychedelic edge and melodic virtues that are more obvious here than in some of the album’s more progressively slanted songs. It is paired wonderfully with its follow-up “Tommy’s Cosmic Avocado”, an extended musical piece that has obvious progressive inclinations while still making excellent use of dynamics and the fundamentals of song construction. The album concludes with “Jungle Crunch”, a wildly improbable musical ride that even goes so far as to find room for rap music under its tent.  

Phantom Phunk’s Arboles Ossific goes places you wouldn’t expect and does so with a ease that surely belies the considerable work that went into making this project a reality. This talented four piece band presents its audience with a large variety of moods and never fails to bring them both intellectual stimulation and a true sense of entertainment that is, ultimately, the hallmark of any great release.  

9 out of 10 stars. 

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/Phantom-Phunk-812842432163858/timeline/ 

Charles Hatton

Project TO - The White Side The Black Side

 

Project TO - The White Side The Black Side 

MI2N: http://mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=193642

Few techno or electronica outfits, past or present, have the audacity emboldening Project TO on their first release. The White Side, The Black Side is a conceptually driven multimedia effort with twelve songs accompanying its presentation. The dozen tracks on their debut release are sectioned off into the two groups alluded to by the album’s title. The white side songs concentrate on the traditional techno experience – persistent rhythms, enormous driving beats, and a glossy thrust that is sure to engage as well as entertain countless listeners. Their counterparts on the black side, in comparison, are much more elemental and lean affairs – the percussion is much more askew, generally, and the line of attack that the music takes is much more narrowly defined and compact. The general atmosphere of the second side is, generally, darker, but not in a cheesy way. The second side’s songs are intended as re-imaginings, or in the band’s parlance “photographic negatives”, and share the same running time as the white side tracks down to the last second. This is a highly unified work that never loses its way or over-indulges despite its high flown conception.  

The first song, “I Hope”, is probably the “lightest” and most across the board accessible track on the album. It includes a great deal of spoken word laid over top that its “black” opposite does not share. “Black I Hope” embodies the aforementioned approach quite well – everything is pared back and boiled to its essential elements. “Sign of the Earth” is quite chaotic, in some respects, for a white side track, but the brash chaos it conjures is more raucous than disoriented – the song never loses a tight grip on its strong musicality. The black side version is much different. “Black Sign of the Earth” sounds like it means harm and looms from the speakers with leering power. The tempo remains as upbeat as ever, but Project TO prove themselves masters of shading with this one. 

“Rebirth” brings the outfit perilously close to the territory of outright rock, but it never ventures too far afield from its techno base. The rock and roll poses figure in most prominently with the changing dynamics of the track that look to build tension. There is no such move on its twin “Black Rebirth”. The black side song comes pummeling from the speakers like a piston-driven fist and hits listeners with the same impact time after time. There are some variations in the track, but like on other black side takes, Project-TO steps back from their white side approach and create distinctive alternatives to the first six songs. 

You are excused if you think the concept driving the album defies reason or sense. It certainly doesn’t fall in line with the typical concept album or musical work structured along thematic lines, but it has a larger scheme that becomes increasingly clear with each subsequent listen. The White Side, The Black Side will not readily surrender its secrets and listeners are urged to give it multiple plays before decided they have a handle on what Project-TO is attempting here. Highly recommended.  

9 out of 10 stars 

Montey Zike