Included here are CDs that have been submitted to us but did not make our top 20. Hence, they do not carry the endorsement of Intelligent Pop as a recommended purchase.
This does not mean, however that we recommend you avoid purchasing them. We think the more independent artists you support, the better.
In these reviews, we try to give you our honest impressions, and indicate what improvements we'd have to see for these artists to achieve top 20 status for their next project. We encourage you to check out any artists that seem, based on our comments, like they might intrigue you. You might love them!
Von Robinson & His Own Universe, “Jostle It” (2006) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
Elvis Costello-styled singer-songwriter pop with a dash of the punk aesthetic. Generally appealing, with a lovely garage-y production value. Sounds homemade and big and warm all at once. Not enough newness here to make the top 20, but quality low-key alternative pop. If you love Costello and Lloyd Cole, it wouldn’t hurt to investigate Von Robinson.
The Reagan Eighties, “Say No to This Drug” (2007) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
A 6-song EP of sloppily-played and poorly-recorded retro-eighties college-radio pop-punk. It’s just right for college radio circa 1986, but not for our website. It’s playful enough, so if you’re into this style of music, you might enjoy giving it a spin, but for our audience, we can’t recommend the Reagan Eighties. That was a hell of a decade, though, gotta admit.
David Serotkin, “None but this time” (2005) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
More colorful lyrics please! More unexpected turns of melody, please! More unexpected production choices please! A succinct lesson: “When I look into your eyes/suddenly I realize…” is NOT ALLOWED! That’s BAD LYRIC WRITING! Look, Dave, you got talent. Now, get mad at me for saying all this crap, take that anger, and do something interesting with it!
The Addiction, “Edge of Content” (2006) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
Histrionic, dramatic, overblown, virtuostic driving rock. Like a modern Toto, but a little more aggressive. The musicians are ridiculously good too, showing off often. They sound like first-call studio cats—with all the good and bad that this reference implies. Drum solos, unbelievable bass licks, and complex arrangements. Production-wise, it sounds very, very good, although very conventional. The lead singer is extremely “can’t resist your love” (search our site to learn what this means). The lyrics can be a little cheesy, as on song 1 when the band sings about how their “time is now”—that is, they’re going to make it big in music! If this all sounds terrible, it isn’t! This album is made with loads of life, energy and spirit. Somehow, through all the cheese, these guys’ love of what they’re doing shines through. They rock hard. The grooves are really funky. On slow songs, they achieve moments of real beauty. It’s nerdy, completely unironic, and really good. A guilty pleasure. It’s not quite intelligent pop, not writing-wise, anyway. Well-crafted pop songs, but, to put it one way, not really belonging to the tradition established by Simon and Garfunkel and kept alive by Sting, if you know what we mean. But it’s appealing if you’re not too concerned about what your coffeehouse-intellectual friends will think of you for listening to it. While we generally like this record, we would still like to hear the Addiction evolve in the future away from the hot licks and toward a more low-key, composition-focused aesthetic. This applies to every member of the band, vocalist and all. You don’t have to TRY to show off your great musicianship. Actually, you might not know it, but try as you might, it will show no matter what you do! Final analysis: not quite top 20, but if you secretly like Toto and Al Jarreau, or didn’t realize how nerdy Geddy Lee really was when you were a kid (and that, uh, kind of describes some people we know), you’ll love this excellent work, and you should buy it. Don’t feel bad about it: you have our permission to love The Addiction!
The Boring Normals, “When I Grow Down” (2006) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
The record label here is “Boring Records.” Man, it’s tempting, but I’m going to resist… Unfortunate review. This is an alternately 3rd- rate Tom-Pettyish/Mick-Jaggerish singer, singing poorly written melodic phrases over extremely sloppily played acoustic-guitar-and drums tracks. Recording sounds very amateur too. Somebody tune those drums! The lyrics are immature. Direct references to “bitterness” and the effects of “childhood” occupy spaces where concrete images should be. We’re tempted to say shame on the recordist who took the money of this not-anywhere-close-to-ready-to-make-an-album artist, but one guesses you have to make a living. Don’t put it on your demo reel! It’s painful to have to be negative about a record. We’ve all had people tell us our music is horrible, and it hurts. But this artist simply needs several more years to develop, and should find a good producer when ready to make a real album. And some decent musicians too. And this may sound like a strange suggestion, but we’d recommend taking a poetry class to develop lyric-writing skills.
Randy Heddon, “The Road to Santiago” (2006) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
Unfortunately, we cannot give this one a recommendation. Although we’re not against sentimentality in music as some cynical critics are, too much hamhandedness can definitely ruin the experience. “Always Do Your Best” is a song title on this album, and it’s a straightforward title devoid of irony. The melodies sound like commercial jingles here. Just not enough complexity of human experience to make this one very interesting. Plus, the performances are simply not tight. The piano is recorded well, but it sounds like John Tesh is playing it. Apologies for the negativity!
MANICproject, “Square One” (2006) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
Very professional sounding synth landscapes with well-done grooves, but nothing really innovative, very little melody (the vocalist mainly whispers with faux angry “intensity”), and silly deep-sounding but ultimately throwaway words: “You're so close, and yet so far.” If you have to have every electronica CD ever made in your collection, get it. Otherwise, spend your time elsewhere.
Quincy Coleman, “Come Closer” (2006) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
First, let it be said that Quincy Coleman is a woman. Great name for a girl! Accordions, Clarinets, Banjos, Spanish trumpets, mandolins, tack pianos, vibraphone, and other candy populate this album, probably the most uniquely instrumentated pop music CD we’ve ever heard, at least from an independent artist. It gives the exquisitely done production a distinctively European flair. The melodies are pretty good too, although the songcraft is less developed and the fact that there isn’t a classic song (although the songs are often attempted throwbacks to jazz/pop standards of decades past) to go along with the classic-style production is a problem. It’s almost as though the songs were written to give the first-rate band something to play, to give the first-rate arranger something to arrange to, to give the first-rate engineer something to record and mix. By the halfway point in the album, I get it. The instruments’ newness has worn off, and I’m looking for a great song that moves me. It doesn’t come, alas. Coleman can sing well in a jazz-pop style, but is not a unique vocalist. She’s the kind of good singer that ends up in the top 10 on American Idol but not the top 2. She’d be a great backup vocalist for a big-time act. Bonnie Raitt, you need a fantastic backup singer? I strongly recommend Quincy Coleman. This is both a criticism and praise. I’m both saying she’s “only backup singer material” and that she’s every bit good enough to tour with the likes of Raitt. The engineer tries various techniques to impart interesting textures to her voice—vintage-sounding reverbs and spaces, obviously good microphones. But there is no hiding the fact that she’s not Norah Jones or Bjork or our own chart-topper Inara George. Is there a way for Coleman to achieve that kind of uniqueness? Maybe: she would have to become “about” something. Develop a serious perspective or statement about life that she was determined to share. These songs are run-of-the-mill love songs, lyrically at least, and it would be difficult for any singer to connect with them sincerely. Of course, Sinatra was able to sell the bejesus out of songs he didn’t connect with authentically. But if Coleman is no Norah Jones, she definitely isn’t Frank, and it’s OK to be a less unique vocalist than that. But you need to find a way to say something special. So that’s the suggestion. Ultimately, as wonderful as the production is, we’d rather an album of great melody, lyric and a personal statement by Coleman. This super-professional album is recommended for people who are interested in creative production and great recording. For devotees of great composition, lyric and singers who connect deeply to the material, wait for Coleman to develop further and become more committed to her message.
Gun Barrel City, “Some Neighbors” (2007) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
Indie rock trying real hard to be lo-fi and punkish. Not always bad, and it does accomplish a neat kind of trashy mood sometimes, and there are moments where the drummer rocks kinda hard, but it is not brilliant or even cute to put “Jazz Age part II” before “Jazz Age part I” on the album. Cheap irony is no insurance policy against suckiness—it’s just a distraction. And why write lyrics if you don’t intend for people to understand what you’re saying? Better to spend more time and effort trying very hard to write really, really good shit. Or would that be cheesy? (More like risky.)
Kent Bottenfield, “Back in the Game” (2007) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
Big-time-sounding, panoramic Christian or, possibly, “secular inspirational” rock. Bottenfield is one of those over-emoting, “can’t-resist-your-love” singers (check elsewhere on the I-pop website to see what we mean by this) in the tradition of Richard Marx, Richard Page (of Mr. Mister) the old Toto singer, and the hackneyed lyrics fall right in line. Ugh. For this reason, despite ultra-professional musicianship, this album fails the test of Intelligent Pop. Not lousy, but not recommended either.
Todd Michalik, “Jig’s Up” (2007) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
1970’s-style rock that sounds a little homemade. Good guitar sounds, but the project desperately lacks energy. The songs, melodies and lyrics alike, are entirely run-of-the-mill. There’s little innovation in the production or the writing, and the band isn’t tight. Michalik himself doesn’t sound like a “real singer.” He sounds like the ordinary high school kid next door who plays the guitar, but nobody is mistaking him for a frontman. His monotonous delivery is the perfect complement to the uninspired performances, full of entirely warmed-over ideas. The whole project lacks dynamics and a serious push to do anything innovative. The guess here is that Michalik needs to find something to inspire him besides the musical heroes he loves. When your only inspiration is other music, you just imitate. Palely. You have to have something of your own to say.
David Silverman, “The Kids Don’t Care” (2007) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
7 songs, and not a very good album, but there’s promise in this singer-songwriter who sounds a lot like the Goo Goo Dolls singer, with an affected roughness to his voice that’s not entirely convincing. Here’s what’s good: Silverman shares with his fellow New Jerseyman Bruce Springsteen a lyrical ability to capture the everyday drama of blue-collar relationships and characters. What he hasn’t shown he shares with the Boss is a flair for great phrasing and melody, or the ability to put his powerful images together to make a compelling song. The honesty on “Barely Breathing,” a simple song about how we’re all just barely hanging on in our lives, is fantastic, and the song will move you. This hints at how powerful this artist could be, but as yet is not. Not a lot of focus or vision or good composition, but talent, yes. Do we sound like a broken record here? Better melody writing, and get a producer. Better melody writing, and get a producer. Better melody writing and…
Laura Cheadle, “Falling In” (2007) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
A bunch of really good local soul/jazz musicians who, it sounds like, went into a local studio, set up, and played some original songs live, jamming as hard as they could without a lot of thought to arrangement, production, mix, songwriting or instrumental composition. It’s funky and improvisational and would be great to dance to at a club or a party, but for a listening session, not something to immerse yourself in. Laura Cheadle is a powerful and soulful nightclub-type singer with lots of energy—a little like a combination of ingredients from, say, Sade, Fiona Apple and Chaka Khan, but as much skill as she has, the overall effect comes off, compared to those vocal powerhouses, a bit second-rate. If she’s got a lot of originality about her, she isn’t
Ron Brault, “Almost There” (2006) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
An album of 70s rock, with tones of Steve Miller and Tom Petty, with additional country influences (The Eagles, Alabama). It’s a homemade recording, with some accompanying mistakes. But there are some nice guitar sounds. Overall, nothing really remarkable here. The singing is typical for a hobbyist in this genre. The songwriting unsophisticated, a little commercial-jingly, with boxy phrasing and hamhanded attempts at hooks that always seem to come on the final line in the chorus. Brault can play the guitar nicely, and seems very sincere. The next step for Bault is to develop his songwriting in the proper direction. Although people love to say “keep it simple,” subtle complexity is the hallmark of good art—and of finer things in general. Think of a great wine. The flavor should have complexity! The Eagles are a great model. Yes, they were “simple” and “straightforward” songwriters. But there was enough sophistication in their songwriting that they didn’t sound like they were writing commercial jingles. (OK, lately Don Henley has written a couple of very bland and jingly tunes, but think REAL Eagles!) Also, for a hobbyist, home recording is great, and we applaud your attempt. But a good producer, though possibly costly, will get you better, more memorable results. He, (or she—any female producers out there?) will push you to write tastier material and to get more personality out of the vocals.
Krister Axel, “Arms Around the River” (2007) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
Described as roots-rock and likened to the Dave Matthews Band in its press release, this artist actually reminds us more strongly of Gavin DeGraw and Randy Newman with their bluesy, bayou-accented singing styles. At first, the possibly over-emphasized “southern blues-man” under-pronunciation may be off-putting to some—especially those who find DeGraw’s own affectations off-putting. But Axel has a lovely, warm voice, does not sound insincere, and achieves several moments of real beauty on this album. Overall, Axel belts less and sounds more sincere than other faux southern bluesmen. He’s generally mellow, which along with some lyrical and reverb-drenched electric guitar work is whence comes the dreamy beauty he sometimes achieves. OK, we should say that we don’t know what Axel is “faux.” Maybe this young and clean-cut-looking man picked cotton as a kid, but he lives in L.A.! Anyway, it’s quite enough to love the blues style; one need not live in Lousiana to have permission to perform this kind of music, and Axel does do it quite well. No points deducted for lack of authenticity—that would be somewhat unfair. The songwriting is thoroughly competent, but never unexpected or brilliant, and that’s why this album fails to reach the top-20. The band’s musicianship throughout is first-rate and the recording quality is terrific. Overall, a very strong effort that’s not quite inventive enough to break the top-20, but a very near miss. Nice work.
Megan Jean and the Klay Family Band, “Autumn” (2007) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
Bare-bones Americana, with acoustic guitar, Bass and a single electric guitarist playing mostly single-note and slide guitar riffs. The songs are not thoroughly written, and the playing is generally unremarkable: the bass player does little other than play the roots and the acoustic guitarist mainly strums root-position chords, although the electric guitarist plays some nice lines. This is not a serious fault, because the album is mainly a showcase for Megan Jean, a very good, smoky-voiced alto. Stylistically she’s not a departure from what you’ve heard, but her pipes are terrific. Lyrically nothing new for the genre, from “I grew up believing everything the Bible says” to “I was in the kitchen on a cold, dark morning.” Not enough innovation here for this album to make a serious run at the top 20, but if you’re a big fan of vocalists, Megan Jean deserves your attention.
Origami Ghosts, “Solving my own puzzles” (2007) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
OK, I kinda like this record. Certainly not at all right for our top 20—there’s not much melody here, except for the infectious chant of track 6, “lawnlaying,” but there’s a coherent vision here and something that draws you in. And this coherence is strange because, well, because this album is so aptly named. “Solving my own puzzles” is a perfect description for what is essentially an album of music set to cryptic poetry—not the other way around. Yes, songwriter John Paul Scesniak could be legitimately accused of being a self-indulgent nihilist pseudo-intellectual writing lyrics that sound deep but which even he is not prepared to interpret—not even to himself. But there’s a sense here that there really is substance behind much of his poetry. It’s not entirely indecipherable, and some of the images really do haunt. Scesniak perhaps thinks he has no faith in words. In what is lyrically the best song, “using words to describe the ocean,” he says, in a wonderful line, “words are trivial…thoughts are just as petty…using words to describe the ocean you’re acting like a jetty.” True, John, but here you are using words to describe experience, to refer to a deep and interesting truth, and the image of a jetty does in fact help you accomplish this. Words are not like a jetty, by which I take you to mean a power drain on real meaning. No, words supply power, and at a deeper level you know this, because while you pretend to be a modern dada-ist with no faith in the power of words, you’ve devoted your entire creative enterprise to them. Your behavior belies your true faith. Perhaps Scesniak knows this. But it’s interesting to watch him battle himself over this issue in his lyrics. “We look down like clouds in the sky…we contemplate nothing, we have no designs,” he writes. Not true, obviously. Plus, that’s a nice metaphor. But Scesniak is afraid to do too much with it. In other words, he’s afraid to imbue his words with too much transparent meaning, but sometimes he’s quite poignant despite himself. Our guess: Scesniak is a young and very talented poet who will fairly soon solve the particular puzzle he’s working out about how much he wants his lyrics to say and to how many people other than himself alone. The guess here is he’ll remain somewhat cryptic but open up at least somewhat, and at that point Scesniak may become a wonderful and important indie rock poet. The poetry is front-and-center here, but what about the music? Well, it marries perfectly to the mood of the lyrics and their imagery, and that’s why this is a recommended album for people who are interested in experimental and avant-garde indie rock. A terrific dulcimerist and an equally competent cello player accompany the requisite sloppy acoustic guitar tracks, creating a sort of acoustic version of the experimental electronica that became too popular in the wake of Radiohead’s transformation of several years ago from pop band to experimentalists. And the result is a nice spin on the experimental aesthetic—and a spin which goes beyond random experimentalism by actually supporting the lyric in a meaningful way. But the real treat is the innovative drummer, who uses natural but wide, warm drum sounds to steer changing grooves around the lyrics in a thoughtful way that really moves and gives life to the images. In fact, probably the most important strong point of this record is that the musicians all sound like they’re listening to the poetry, trying to make their own sense of it. That’s the source of the unified vision and why the album doesn’t spin off into meaningless experimental masturbation—as Radiohead sometimes does. It’s definitely a niche album, for fans of avant-garde indie-rock and people who don’t mind lyrics that can be frustratingly indecipherable. But while there’s a glut of music in this genre, this artist is a cut above most, and the prediction here is that a little maturity will make John Scesniak a touch more accessible, a touch more concrete in his imagery, a touch more concerned with melodic theme, development and arc, a little less interested in disjoint stream-of-consciousness experiments. The talent, both musically and as a poet, is there. For these reasons, while this album doesn’t make a serious run at top-20 status, this is still an artist for many intelligent pop fans to introduce themselves to and watch in the future. You should know who you are.
Blitch Bango, “You Said She Said” (2006) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
Hate to write this one, but we have no choice but to be dismissive here. Jangly acoustic guitar-driven alt-pop reminiscent of the Gin Blossoms, with some overdriven guitar. Lead vocalist has that “regular guy” sound…when you can hear him. The lead vocal is horribly recorded and mixed so quiet that the lyrics are unintelligible, which makes listening to the record extremely hard work. The melodies are run-of-the-mill. And this colorless, eventless journey goes on for 20 songs, none of which stands out from the others in any discernible way. So the project is so unremittingly unremarkable that it’s, well, remarkable for that fact alone. Apologies for the negativity. We think this band must step back and re-evaluate what it’s doing, because there’s clearly some talent here, and any 20-song project obviously requires a whole lot of work. Not sure where this one went wrong, but we’d maybe start with a new singer, a new producer, and an infusion of a sense of adventure.
Plan B, “I’m the Captain, Where are we Going?” (2007) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
Pro-level soundscapes created by inventive keyboard programming and skillful use of drum loops. Great for getting stoned, if you’re young enough that you still do that. If you’re a grown-up, however, this is clearly a niche purchase. You’d have to very into the experimental use of sound effects and unorthodox synth sounds to appreciate this record, and even if you are, you are likely to find some of the elements in the soundscape (such as unintelligible distant voices that sound like they’re coming over a loudspeaker) have been used already one or two times too often by other artists. Pretty good quality work, but be sure it’s your thing before you buy.
Raman Sachdev, “Preach” (2006) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
This review is mainly for recording engineers: this might be the most compressed CD ever created. Compression does not always sound good! In fact it usually doesn’t! The cymbals do not even decay, so that a sloshy hi-hat turns into a constant stream of white noise drilling your eardrums. Ow! For the non-recordists out there: not much else to say about this project, except that, when he belts (and when you can hear him over the deafening, overcompressed guitars), the singer does do a remarkable imitation of the Goo Goo Dolls singer. OK, how about something constructive? The lyrics are hamfisted, so maybe take a poetry class. There’s a sense of melody here, so we’re not saying give it up. The artist could turn into a legitimate songwriter. Maturity and development might help with the GGD imitation problem. And for your next project, you should work with an experienced producer.
M2B, “Signs” (2006) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
Regular-sounding, fairly big-budget-sounding modern rock, with bright overdriven guitars, gobs of compression, and a Sister-Hazel-like singer, with a little Scott-Stapp-like “Hrrrrrrh” thrown in there. Not art; rather, purposely crafted to appeal to big-label unimaginative A&R reps with business degrees. (Haven’t the biggies gone completely out of business yet?) To an I-pop fan, not very interesting.
Clare Cooper, “Valentine” (2006) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
This is straight-ahead piano rock, with tastes of the blues and of Motown. It’s actually a little like a female Elvis Costello. The melodies are straightforwardly inviting and the lyrics are clever. But there’s a little too much of both, actually: the melodies are too straightforward and predictable (a problem at least some of us have with Costello, but it’s worse here), and the lyrics are clever to the point of cutesiness. The production, too, is entirely unremarkable—filled with hackneyed bluesy piano and guitar licks and off-the-shelf reverbs on every instrument. Cooper is an unremarkable but competent vocalist—which is fine, but if you don’t have great pipes, you have to have great and convincing delivery, and hers is a little less than fully convicted. The whole project rather sounds like a pretty decent local singer, and some decent but not particularly imaginative local musicians, were hired to come down to the local studio to do some demos of some “real pop songs” that the local jingle-writer had been kicking around with for a few years so he could send them to a publisher. Nobody in the room seems to have had much at stake. OK, hang on, that description sounds like something entirely horrible. This album is at least listenable, and nothing about it is actually horrible. But it does contain whiffs of all the elements of above-described horror story, and to overcome that, it would need something very, very special—like stunning melody, undeniable groove, or a lyric that makes you cry. As far as we can tell, “Valentine” has none of these things.
Alan Semerdjian, “When there was something wrong with you,” (2006) (Reviewed 8/01/2007)
Acoustic and bluesy electric guitars meets dark synth pads—it’s like Shawn Colvin meets Coldplay, with a slightly typical, “rough” rock voice (a little like Mark Cohn), but very, very professional and passionate singer. Confessional, spiritual, relationship lyrics. Not many drums, and when they appear, they don’t sound particularly professional—might be canned loops. Productions are mostly meditative, ethereal. Mixes could use a little air, vocals a little soft at times. Sometimes it sounds a little like a live recording. Not much attention was placed on producing an amazing soundscape. It could have used a little more care here because… Melodies don’t inspire, neither do lyrics, though both are fine. Writing is fine but not amazing. For this reason, a near miss for the top 20. Almost recommended. The artist succeeds most when he’s just doing acoustic and vocal: he’s soulful, convincingly grizzled. But a little local. Not big time.
Million Billion — Ready. Fire. Aim. 2006 (Reviewed 7/21/2006)
Decent quality, if not particularly exciting, college-rock band. Hints of alt-rock bands like, maybe, Sister Hazel, Sugar Ray and Sublime (this latter, especially, in how “live” the band can sound) combine to produce something that’s ultimately just a little too predictable. Occasionally they venture into “texture” Fixx-rock (as on track 4, “Inhuman”), as if, realizing that Sister Hazel and Sugar Ray are a little 6-years-ago, they intend to make sure to have their “Killers” base covered. At least when they go to this musical place, they do a nice job of it. The end to which “Inhuman” builds is big—as in sweeping, symphonic—and well executed.
But overall, we just can’t seem to find much inspiration or inventiveness. The songwriting is competent if formulaic, and never wows you. Songs are quickly forgotten. The instrument playing is mediocre, never bad, never inspired. The singer is professional, but not special and not especially unique in his delivery. No single one of these traits of mediocrity is a huge negative where something else is really fantastic—like, maybe, the writing. But put it all together, and…zzzzzzz.
The same can be said of the production. There are a few tricks—the horn section here, the wink-wink cheesy drum machine there—but it’s all too by-the-numbers. Nothing to write home about. Of course, the recording sounds nice—but this is par for the course for most unsigned major-label-aiming acts these days.
As long as they’re not “too 2003” for the labels, Million Billion going to look great to a 25-year-old A&R guy who can’t carry a tune but got hooked up by a family friend with a great job and thinks he knows how to pick the next big thing. Because of this and their obvious good administrative organization, we predict they’ll get signed to a sizeable label. Honest, we can imagine this band seeing considerable success. But for a dedicated intelligent pop fan who has bought their album and puts it on the stereo, we can only predict a good afternoon nap. Sleep with confidence; you’re not missing anything important.
Sophie Barker — Earthbound, 2006 (Reviewed 7/21/2006)
Ethereal, new-agey pop with angelic, if somewhat angry lead vocals. Barker has a terrific voice. Extremely well produced and performed, with beautiful textures and serviceable songwriting. Track 4, “Wintertime,” especially, is enveloping. The vocal sounds great. But, especially as pertains to the composition (and you’ve heard us say this many times before), it’s not quite a standout among the many other competently made albums other independent artists make.
Artists must ask themselves, what will make me different from other artists? What will make me unique? What will make people remember my work? They must ask this especially in regard to their composition—lyric and melody—and not rely on production ideas or how professional their album sounds. (Trust us, there is a limitless supply of wonderful- and expensive-sounding independent records out there. You will not blow us or anyone else away with production. Everybody has a great sounding record. But almost nobody can write!)
Regarding uniqueness, artists can achieve this if they are patient with themselves: You must trust that, as a human with unique experience, you can grow beyond imitation and find what makes you different. This singer hasn’t arrived at that point yet, but has the pipes to do it if she develops further.
Listeners interested in ethereal, new-agey pop might be more satisfied if they check out our one-time top 20 dweller Ellery, who has inked a deal with a label and has a new and recommended album available. Ellery’s Tasha Golden has an equally good voice but combines it with more focused and memorable songwriting.
Jason Dean — Dreams Come True Giveaway, 2006 (Reviewed 7/21/2006)
Some songs seem part of the current wave of Beatles-esque adult pop, only Dean doesn’t visit that place vocally, sounding more like a modern rock singer, with a little bit of Gavin DeGraw-like soulfulness. Great guitar sounds and experimentation with trumpets and unexpected keyboard sounds. In the opening track, lots of interesting chord changes and heavy use of dominant seventh chords especially signal a Beatles, or perhaps a Wings-era Paul McCartney influence. In these songs, Dean may compare perhaps more strongly with good songwriting bands like Fastball. But elsewhere, Dean’s songs are endearing, acoustic guitar-driven melodic pieces suggestive. On some songs you hear the Beach Boys. On others you hear the Monkees. On still others, Billy Joel.
In fact, the more you listen to Jason Dean, the more you realize he doesn’t sound like anybody. Although he’s difficult to categorize, the question is: has he found his own sound yet? If he hasn’t, he seems very close. Lots of interesting melody lines clever lyrics ought to hold your attention, but…the album sounds terrific, but the undermixed vocal (it’s slight, but problematic) makes it frustratingly difficult to connect with the melody and the subject matter of the songs and tires my ears as I attempt to hear through the band to the important content underneath it all. Moreover, sometimes the melodic narrative of the songs themselves (the narrative development of the melodies from verse to chorus, and through bridges) is unfocused or hidden among production ideas, competing for attention. Dean must remember, in recording his next album, that the goal is not to sound amazing or impress. Fundamentally songwriters are storytellers. If you sound great, but I don’t follow your storyline, I’m left cold. Don’t throw out all the backup vocals; instead trust that I’ll hear them on the 3rd or 4th listen, even if they’re lower in the mix. You don’t have to shine the spotlight on every idea you have; I’ll get around to noticing them. Instead, keep the spotlight firmly on the lead vocal and what it’s saying.
This is not to say Dean’s album is a bunch of amazing songs hiding inside an overactive production. The songs are interesting, innovative, but usually not great compositions. Innovative melodic and rhythmic ideas abound, but they mostly coexist in isolation from one another. You hear a melody line and think, “Wow, interesting,” then you lose interest for a half a minute before another melodic idea grabs your interest, and once again you think, “Wow, interesting.”
When Dean learns to connect these isolated melodic and production ideas together to tell a coherent story, then he’ll be a mighty powerful artist. For now, he should be proud that he’s created an interesting and well-produced, serious work of intelligent pop that just misses landing in our top 20.
Wicked Gift — Down for the Summer, 2006 (Reviewed 7/21/2006)
We love the effort. This is a quirky band that’s flat-out-determined to do something different, intelligent, and catchy . A little bit Rush (singer Phil Fox’s androgynous, nerdy-rocker sound), a little bit the Fixx (Fox’s bright, strummy rhythm guitar), a little bit Prefab Sprout (the experimentalist ethic, the use of bold keyboards and big backing vocals, and again Fox’s rhythm guitar), a little bit Oingo Boingo (the driving 1980s dance grooves). There’s a fantastic electric fiddle player who—and this is rare—really knows how to play in a pop setting. She adds a terrific texture to lots of the songs.
With the mixture of an often frenetic mixture of instruments flying around at high tempo and thick chordal textures, it rather sounds like this concept album (Down for the Summer refers to the “story” the album tells of a slacker’s summer at a beach resort community, and indeed the band members live in a resort town) was produced by someone who loves Thomas Dolby or perhaps 1980s-era Rupert Hine (who produced The Fixx and Howard Jones). Hooray for that.
The ethic is party pop, intelligent-pop style, and the band mostly succeeds. Why aren’t they in our top 20? Well, the album just has the feel of a slightly unserious effort—not that they don’t work hard and love what they do, but relative to what this talented bunch is capable of, they seem to choose the easy way out. In the end, it’s a party album for smart people, and we’d be more interested in an album that’s a serious work of intelligent pop music that contains party elements. The singer is a fantastic talent. So why does his performance seem like a one-take performance, with some poor takes kept, some lines that are sung with less commitment than others?
The same lack of seriousness applies to their songwriting. There are some terrific lines in songs like “Over,” (The hook, “What part of over don’t you understand?” is hit-worthy) and “Money’s the Blood” is just terrific: a frenetic, driving song that would sound even better when drunk. Fox’s voice sounds great wailing on that one, too. For some reason, the band seems more committed, emotionally and philosophically, to this song than to others.
Down for the Summer seems like a fun album for intelligent pop fans to listen to on a road trip to…well, to a summer resort vacation. But it’s not going to move you or make you think. Shame, because this group is capable of creating amazing art. They don’t have to “take themselves too seriously” or give up their sense of humor to do it. Bandleader Fox will simply have to approach his art with more philosophical commitment than the average person pours into a mere vacation. When and if Fox and comrades do so, don’t be surprised to see them in our top 10.
To sum: Worth investigating, but disappointing in important ways.
Marie Haddad — A Beautiful Road, 2006 (Reviewed 7/21/2006)
Piano-based Tori Amos-like femme art-rock. First a production note: It’s competently played, Haddad’s piano playing is good, but the vocals aren’t well recorded or mixed: the effects sound cheap and overused. Why is there so much reverb on that piano?
On to more important matters: The songs aren’t very memorable. Symmetric, predictable melody lines and lyrical lines like “What did you see in her that you didn’t see in me?” and “Where do I go from here?” which, in isolation, would not be damning, but such a line must be in a certain context in order to work. Here, such lines are expected to carry the weight of the song’s meaning.
But let’s not be cruel. This sounds like an inexperienced artist, not necessarily a lousy one, one who could grow in leaps and bounds in the next couple of years, and any comments given here are likely to be inapplicable to the more mature Haddad who will be making the next record. Just one suggestion, Marie: trying to hit certain marks is part of the process of being an inexperienced artist who hasn’t developed her own sound yet (especially when you don’t have an experienced producer to turn you away from this tendency). As you continue to make music, please make sure you are not trying to sound honest, emotional, intense or “like a star,” including sounding like your favorite artists. Trying equals failing. Just explore ideas and be whatever you are. If it connects with lots of people, you’ll sell lots of records. If it connects with a few people, you’ll sell a few records. Are you willing to accept whichever is the result of this authenticity? If you try to sound a certain way, however, it will connect with almost nobody and you can guess how many records you’ll sell.
Mystery Artist — Mystery Album with stick figure on the CD, 2006 (Reviewed 7/21/2006)
OK, so here’s why we beg and plead with artists to put their name and contact information on the actual CD, and not just on the liner notes. You’re about to read a mainly positive review for a very good CD. However, as is the case with a music review website that receives lots and lots of CDs, we’ve misplaced the CD jewel case and liner notes, and this CD (actually, it’s a CD-R) has only a smiling stick figure drawn on an otherwise white paper label, with an “X” over the stick man’s right eye. Until we find the liner notes which are no doubt floating among numerous pieces of paper on a disorganized desk somewhere in Everett’s office, we will continue to have no idea who this artist is. So if this album sounds good to you, you won’t be able to buy it until we figure out who it is either by his contacting us or by our running across the CD jewel case! Henceforth, the solo male artist will be known as “mystery artist.”
Mystery artist sounds like one of those hard-singing soulful white guys like Gavin DeGraw, and his style is straightforward soulful, current adult pop that rests comofortably alongside DeGraw, John Mayer, and Jason Mraz from our own top 20, perhaps Nicolas Johansen (although Johansen shows none of the R&B vocal influences). His album, mystery album, sounds terrific and expensive, although as with much modern pop rock the vocal is a little undermixed.
Mystery artist can sing his butt off, but it’s unclear whether his is an authentically new voice. Is he contributing anything particularly new to the modern “soulful adult pop” genre? Probably not. You’d hear this guy in a bar and think he might be the best singer you’d ever seen in a bar, but that the bar is, until he finds a more original voice, still the appropriate place for him.
The same can be said for his writing. The songs are attractively introspective, and competently written. But it doesn’t sound like mystery artist is pushing himself to explore any new territory. The melodies, line by line, are never stupid and are sometimes very good, but you don’t remember them for long after listening—either for their infectiousness or their brilliance. They’re mainly just competent-ordinary. Nonetheless, song 5, “The Woman You Are,” is one of the more funky and innovative minimalist jams we’ve heard.
Clearly mystery artist has towering talent, vocally and otherwise. If you love Mraz and DeGraw, this is easily a recommended purchase. For more demanding listeners, mystery artist is not yet recommended. However, he clearly has the ability to do truly amazing work. Probably one of the most talented 20 artists we’ve heard, and as he matures and becomes more subtle, more storytelling- and song-oriented in his approach (and less intent on simply sounding soulful and big-time), look for us to recommend his future work to intelligent pop fans.
Jamieson Tobey — Everybody Feels the Same, 2006 (Reviewed 4/20/2006)
Jamieson Tobey has created a lush and highly competent work of indie-pop that narrowly missed making our top twenty.
It was a slight lack of variety and the record’s placing stylistic focus above melodic composition in its list of priorities (although Tobey’s melodic ideas often begin strongly; they have, however an unfinished quality discussed later) that made Tobey’s record a slight mismatch for our chart. There are some Intelligent Pop fans who will find this record a rewarding purchase. Read on to find out whether this is you.
The stylistic focus and the lack of variety mentioned above are closely related. Tobey is a good singer who adopts that slightly emotionally detached whisper-tone communicative of understatement (but not necessarily irony), which will be familiar to fans of Wilco and other modern intellectual indie-popsters. Whisper-singing is very in these days, and Tobey sounds great doing it. The problem is that, perhaps in pursuit of stylistic focus, this is all he does, every moment, in every song. There are virtually no dynamics in his singing, and few dynamics on the entire CD. This dreamy, unchanging delivery is hypnotic—but perhaps that’s not such a good thing. It sabotages any memorable “hooks” by hiding them in a sea of sameness. The unrelentingly soft, and undermixed, vocal combines with unrelentingly lush, ultra-wide stereo production, to wash the songs together into a monotonous, if beautiful, soundscape. No doubt this is precisely what Tobey intended, but one does not come away from the CD anxious to hear the songs again: they are in fact difficult for me to hear in my head, even after several listens.
This is all odd, because there is some good composition on the CD. For example, the melodic development in the chorus of the opening track, “Love,” is clever if extremely subtle. Slightly less subtle and even more impressive is the melodic development in the verse of the second song, “Everybody feels the same.” Here, Tobey plays more with rhythm than with pitch, and makes us wait as long as possible for its ultimately weak resolution (lack of resolution?), all to good effect. Unfortunately, the chorus is less satisfying. After building our expectations, the refrain sounds a little made-up-on-the-spot, less composed.
Unexpected harmonic resolutions populate the slow, rolling “Where the waves begin,” yet another song which begins with high melodic promise, but fails to pay off strongly with a singable chorus. It’s almost certain that Tobey intends this unresolved quality. This song, like so many on this album, is a rumination, a vague conversation, a hallucinogenic journey (but one where the landscape seldom changes) not intended to addict you with strong refrains. Tobey has a command of melody, and could write tighter, “hookier” ones if he wished—and without turning the record into bubblegum. For us, however, his choice not to do so is a little disappointing. While the more understated aesthetic to which the CD’s composition subscribes is artistically legitimate, must every song follow its dictates?
Most of the album’s tracks, then, are droning, slow-to-mid-tempo productions with wide, stereo strumming acoustic guitars, pianos, acoustic drums (often with brushes) and plenty of lush, current, synthesizer sound effects (think Radiohead, perhaps) and reverby electric guitars. It all sounds amazing, but when stereo width is exploited to its fullest from the beginning to the end of every song, it can lose its effectiveness for want of contrast. A famous engineer once called this “supermono”: if everything is in stereo, nothing, effectively, is.
Finally, the lyrics are frequently somewhat undefined as well. Fascinating images abound, but exactly what is Tobey talking about? You have to listen closely to tell. One thing you can say: the lyrics match the music. They are lush images stitched together only as coherently as the storyline of an acid trip. But are they any good? Well, on their own terms, yes they are.
Jamieson Tobey is obviously a very intelligent musician doing what he intends to do. Although we’ve been somewhat critical, many intelligent listeners will find plenty to love in this lush soundscape that combines flavors of Wilco, Radiohead and Coldplay with melodies that are ruminative, unresolved, and highly impressionistic. Ultimately it’s a beautiful sounding record with some moments of brilliance, but those moments are somewhat hidden by the production. If it sounds like your cup of tea, however, it’s worth a visit to Tobey’s website at www.jamiesontobey.com.
Patrice Moerman — Following a Dream, (circa 2001) (Reviewed 3/4/2006)
This is a painful review. And we could simply avoid writing it, but it so beautifully illustrates the value of the Intelligent Pop website and concept that we’re going to include it.
This CD was submitted to us by an artist who is, as far as I can tell, extremely friendly, and does not appear to take herself overly seriously at all. She seems like an extremely pleasant person. Someone for whom we would love to write a glowing review. Alas, we cannot.
From the packaging included with the CD—and from the commentary on her CDBaby page—there is every reason to believe this is a CD that an independent music fan ought to rush to check out, or even purchase without listening.
First, she’s a decorated, award-winning writer, with 9 honorable mentions in the Billboard songwriting contest. “The CD was produced by Jim Robeson. Jim has a long history of producing and engineering for many fine musicians and is a three-time Grammy nominee,” say the notes on the album’s CDBaby page. Moreover, her CD arrived with a one-sheet (that’s a one-page paper extolling the CD’s musical, critical and sales accomplishments) indicating numerous rave reviews from different outlets. “Sheryl Crow with the maturity and bluesy heart and soul of Bonnie Raitt,” wrote Indie Music Magazine. “Stellar songwriting and production makes ‘Following a Dream’ a must buy!” is attributed to the “Boris Rock Show/WRTC FM Trinity College Radio.”
More raves: “Her passion for pure rock shows and her story ideas are truly unique,” is attributed to Pro Audio Review. “Stands out from the crowd,” is a quote from guitargirls.com.
For those who are not aware of it, we need to make one thing clear: in the internet age, amassing rave reviews is easy. An artist whose publicist or promoter has a decent mailing list will have no trouble picking up a half-dozen glowing reviews for just about any CD, good or bad.
Moerman’s CD is not entirely horrible. But it is entirely unremarkable. Almost everything about it is, in a very unfortunate word, mediocre. Moerman can sing—as advertised, she sounds a little like Bonnie Raitt—but her vocals do not stand out as particularly dynamic, passionate, or unique. The production quality and playing of instruments are both minimally professional, but almost entirely uninspired, verging on sounding canned. The songwriting is not incompetent, but is overly symmetrical, and, both lyrically and melodically, lacks invention. It is littered with boxy, simplistic couplets with a lack of imagery—almost always lines of equal length, producing entirely predictable rhyme schemes. A quick illustration from two different songs:
Don’t think I can go there anymore
Don’t think I can walk through that door
The memory too painful for me to bear
Sometimes I feel like I’m not really there.
I’ve run away from this many times before
I’m all doubled over by what may be in store
I’m so distracted that my mind can’t see
What in the world is happening to me
It’s just not possible—not for us, anyway—to find in this the inspiration, the uniqueness, the personal touch, the idiosyncracy, or any of the elements that simply must be present to make a listener fall in love with a record. I have no doubt Moerman is, in fact, inspired about music, but she has to find a way to get that inspiration onto a CD, and this effort hasn’t done it.
I really do hate writing negative reviews. My own work has on occasion been reviewed unenthusiastically, and it stung, even left me deflated and uninspired. That is certainly not my wish here. If Moerman reads this review, she might be furious with me. She might argue with my points, and possibly even send me a letter explaining where our criticism has come off the tracks.
But we think there’s real benefit in an artist’s being held to a high standard instead of being fed the fluff that passes for “CD reviews” in so many quadrants of the internet today. Let’s say it as we see it: critics have been dishonest with this artist—and with you, the listener—about this CD.
The consequence? Everyone is hurt. You, the listener, are hurt because you cannot use reviews to distinguish good CDs from bad. In turn the best independent artists are hurt because, since buyers like you can’t distinguish the best albums, you don’t buy any product at all. Finally, underdeveloped artists like Moerman are hurt because they are denied the critical, and yes, sometimes negative, feedback that would facilitate their development into artists that could legitimately make great music.
Here, then, is our advice for buyers and other musicians. Go to CDBaby if you wish, find this CD, and listen to the MP3s to confirm that we are telling you the truth. Then come back to us, and buy an album from our top 20.
And here is our advice for Moerman. Of course, you’re going to be angry about this. That’s normal. And do please accept our—and my personal (Everett’s)—heartfelt regret for having said these negative things. But after your anger subsides, forget all those glowing reviews and conduct a serious self-evaluation. Of course you are not talentless. But you can do so much better work. Here are some suggestions for how.
The package you sent us indicates you have over 60 additional songs. Maybe that is too many. We suggest you take lots of time with each song until you are satisfied that it is really amazing. And compare it against your heroes to verify this. You love Bonnie Raitt? Great. We do too. Are your songs in a league with hers? Keep honing and honing until you’re satisfied they are. This means the melodies should be just as inventive, just as unexpected. The lyrics just as colorful. In the studio, the performances should be just as honest, just as poignant. Can’t sing like Bonnie? No problem: that’s not what it’s all about. Honesty is. You sing fine. But you do not sound like you are singing the meaning of the song. (It will be easier to do this when your lyrics are improved.)Instead, you are “trying to sound like a professional singer.” This is the worst thing you can do, of course. This level of greatness I’m asking is, of course, a difficult, nearly impossible standard, but nobody else seems to be demanding it of you. WE ARE.
Do not fall prey to myths about the great, classic, songs “being written in 5 minutes.” Genius does not necessarily work fast, however much people believe it does. It can take dozens of hours over several weeks—and the rejection of hundreds of potential ideas—before you find that just-right chorus, or that perfect word or image. Even when you hear about classic songs being written on the back of a matchbook or a napkin, you are not hearing about all the awful drivel that’s scribbled impromptu on various bits of paper…and later thrown away, to our eternal gratitude.
Now, about lyric-writing. You are using the “language of country and rock music” to write your lyrics. The images and metaphors you use are not your own. They are borrowed. What we are interested in is Patrice Moerman’s unique perspective on the world, not a one-size-fits-all quoting of the modern pop/country idiom. That, we have heard before.
In other words, “Not every girl goes for the money/Some want a good man to call them honey” is not going to cut it! This is an entirely banal way to express the idea that you want a relationship based on something other than lucre, and I don’t believe for a second this is the best you can do. The question is, how would you express this idea, in a way that’s uniquely Patrice? Don’t answer too quickly, because it’s very, very difficult to find the right words, especially when they must fit a particular rhythm.
Like trying on clothes, discovering just the right phrase takes time. You try on outfit after outfit after outfit…until finally you find the right one, the one that fits just right and is uniquely you. This is hard work, but you have to find the way. Honestly, great music is more about patience than about talent. I’m speaking to ALL OF YOU artists out there. Sometimes you luckily stumble on something fantastic, but making great music is usually very, very demanding, hard work!!!
Ultimately, the way to raise the level of your art is simple: raise the level of your expectations. Expect greatness, and assume you’re not finished with any project—writing a song, recording a vocal, whatever—until greatness, or at least your exhausted best, is achieved. This may slow your creative process down to an unbearable crawl, but so be it. If you’re committed to squeezing the last drop of production out of your talent, you’ll pay the price. And you should be so committed.
I am not denying that there are varying talent levels. For some artists, finding the right melodic or lyrical phrase will be easier than for others. But we decline to judge Moerman’s talent level—we comment only on the work she has done. Whatever an artist’s talent level, we hold that that artist is capable of interesting work by finding their own unique way of expressing their experience honestly and without pretense.
I’d rather see an artist leave the world one truly great song than a thousand OK songs. This is within reach of Patrice Moerman. We will have our ears wide open for her next project.
E.J. Wells — Rhyolite, 2002. (Reviewed 2/25/2006)
Wells and co-producer Chris Arduser were reportedly surprised at the failure of this album to garner more attention. This is no surprise; in psychological parlance, people are “cognitive misers,” and if they cannot easily categorize a record on a first or second listen, they frequently lose the patience to continue applying the effort necessary to understand it. This is the rule followed by major label marketing departments, of course, to the eternal detriment of art.
Rhyolite defies pigeon holes. It is electric-alt-western-rock-punk-mariachi, or something like that, with extremely professional production. Straight rock’n’roll beats and distorted guitar blend with Southwestern single-note-hollow-body electric guitar sounds, trumpets from south of the border, and Wells’s reasonably convincing outlaw baritone (a whiff, but only a whiff, of Johnny Cash) to produce a mix of styles that we’ve not heard before, but which does work, if you invest some time in it. The record sounds fully professional, as would be expected given Arduser’s involvement.
It’s a very smartly made record, and probably came out exactly as its conceivers intended. It is, it can be said, a good record. But it’s not right for our top 20. Although Wells must be weary of hearing this refrain, in this case the record misses for reasons other than merely its defying categorization.
Wells’s ironic lyrics wink at you through a veritable laundry list of old-West clichés — high-noon duels, horses and wagons, coffee and eggs, cowboy calls of “yip yip yip.” Thus does the singer keep his subject matter firmly at an emotional arm’s length. After several listens, I still remain unconvinced that I can detect Wells giving the first damn about the stories he’s telling. I can’t be sure whether or not he’s making fun of his subjects and the cowboy-music genre. Of course, by intellectual punk aesthetics, this is the very definition of getting it right. But we are looking to fall in love with records, not merely to chuckle as we acknowledge wry intelligence in them.
The melodies are fine and sometimes hook you, but can sound like an afterthought. It’s clear the emphasis in Wells’s writing was not here. Despite the above-mentioned ironic remove, and aside from the strong stylistic statement of the record, we think it’s probably the lyric and the stories Wells intended to place front-and-center. And in this matter, we think it was a mistake to undermix the vocal. In this respect, Rhyolite abandons its western folk footing in favor of that of modern punk rock, in which loud vocals are viewed with suspicion. Although Wells’s vocal is not so soft as to make it clear whether this choice was conscious or unconscious, we think at least unconsciously, the producers may have invoked this punk tradition during mixdown. Where audible, Wells’s vocals are colorful. But in most of the songs, there are entire passages rendered wholly indecipherable by sheer low volume. Where the lyrics are of primary importance, we would argue low vocals can wreak considerable damage on an album’s impact, and may have played a stealthy yet enormous role in this record’s failure to garner more attention.
If we take Johnny Cash as the standard-bearer for slightly-ironic-yet-honest outlaw folk, a comparison of this with a record from Cash’s best years may be appropriate. Are Cash’s vocals buried in the mix? Almost never. Indeed, by today’s standards, vocals on country, folk and rock records from the 1960s tended overmix their lead vocals to the point of absurdity. I can imagine sitting at the controls and trying to persuade a modern-day singer to allow me to mix his vocal as loud as on, say, a Roy Orbison record. I would get nowhere!
If Wells wants to pursue this 3-year-old project further, a left-field recommendation, then, might be that he re-mix it, with the vocal overmixed to the point of what will sound to him like ridiculousness. As a reference, consider Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind from 1997, produced by Daniel Lanois. The vocal is, on this album, at times so loud as to be mixed manifestly incorrectly. It takes guts to do this, but almost nobody outside the musicians sitting around a mixing console ever complains that the vocal is too easy to make out. People who love music of the punk aesthetic and embrace experimentation at the same time should not object to this one change. Anyhow, they should check out this record, because, notwithstanding our gripes, it’s good, the attitude is just right, and it ought to have received more attention than it did. (Did this record not achieve more notoriety at college radio, at least?)
Alternately, Wells could take his promising stylistic beginnings as a foundation and evolve just a smidge. For our preferences, we’d like to hear more authentic connection with the subject matter, a little more seriousness, and a really loud vocal. Wells clearly has something important to say, and it might be prudent to view Rhyolite as a preliminary experiment, the step he needed to take to ready himself to create his masterpiece.
Roger Weber — Untitled, 2006. (Reviewed 2/19/2006)
It hurts us to say negative things about unsigned musicians’ work. Unlike Simon Cowell, we do not relish cutting people down. But where would our credibility be if we did not level with our readers? If Roger Weber comes back in a few years with a greatly improved product, we will tell you so; but you will only believe us if we are willing to tell you now that his current work is sub-par.
And if Weber wants someday to do great work, he must have someone who will tell him that his current work is not even in the ballpark right now, and suggest where he needs to improve. We will try to serve that function here.
Roger Weber’s album was submitted on a CD-R, with no album title. That’s fine by us! The CD-R — or one with many of the same songs — is available on CDBaby under the title “Derby Week,” which is the name of a song not included on the CD he sent us. Anyhow, we’re happy to tell you about it.
Unfortunately, we cannot say Weber’s CD is a serious professional product. Indeed, it is far from that. But Weber does have an incipient ability to find catchy melodic ideas, an ability that can be enhanced, developed, and surrounded with more professional abilities if Weber is willing to work on it.
In fairness, it’s likely Weber has a budgetary deficit. To begin with, the songs he sent us sound extremely homemade. Obvious digital distortion, digital pianos, dated-sounding drum machines, and cheap reverbs mixed entirely too loud populate these gentle, country-tinged, folk-like, Jimmy Buffet-esque songs, which sound as though they’re conceived from inside a 1960s pop mentality. (That last part is not a bad thing, of course!)
Some of the refrains could be imagined playing on country-music radio, but much of the melody writing belies a lack of musical sophistication. It’s simply too predictable, like the work of a novice songwriter.
We’re puzzled as to why the digital piano parts are played so sloppily. A “loose feel” can hardly be the artistic aim, since the drum tracks, played by a machine, are entirely quantized, and include amateurish “drum fills” that exacerbate the "electric-organ/fun machine" quality of the rhythm tracks. (For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, a Fun Machine was one of those electric organs from the 1970s that had canned rhythm tracks, so that you could press one key, say, “C major,” and a drum, bass and chord part would begin playing, so that you could play a melody along with it.) This sloppiness over canned tracks cannot possibly be for any ironic effect. It is simple amateurism.
The singing, too, is often rushed, simply ahead of the beat. Nor does this sound intentional.
It’s hard to know exactly what to recommend that Weber do to improve this. There are enough melodic hooks — or the beginnings of what could be effective hooks with a more polished overall product — that it’s probably not fair to suggest Weber is entirely incapable or in the wrong field. He does, after all, sing in tune, and captures the laid-back Buffet sound with at least some credibility, if not quite conviction.
I’m not sure the aesthetic aim of this CD is "Intelligent Pop." However, if he wanted to take another run at our top 20, the first thing to do would be to simply raise his expectations, to raise his level of seriousness. This CD sounds like something created as a hobby, by someone who does something entirely non-artistic for a living, someone who perhaps fancies himself talented, but isn’t aware that making good music entails demanding work and daily dedication. Weber’s CDBaby page contains a bio that implies he has some musical experience, but this CD frankly sounds like the work of a novice.
It’s hard to believe Weber is unaware of this, but if he is, my recommendation is that he sit down with his CD and a couple of well-known CDs from the folky genre he is trying to emulate. Find a Jimmy Buffet CD, and maybe not an Alan Jackson (mentioned on his CDBaby page), but a Bob Dylan CD. "A-B" your CD and theirs. That is, listen to a few bars of one of your songs, then listen to a few bars of theirs. Does Jimmy Buffet allow his keyboardist to miss notes entirely? Does he allow his keyboardist or bass player to rush ahead of the drummer, so that the rhythm section is not playing tightly together? And what is Dylan doing with his lyrics and his delivery that you are not? (Hint: he’s allowing the listener a little bit of room to figure out for himself the writer’s moral vantage point, and his delivery is more casual, not as preachy.)
This is not to suggest that it’s easy to be as great as Dylan, or even as skilled as Buffet. But if one cannot hear these stark differences between one’s own music and that of the pros, then one may indeed be in the wrong field. It is sympathetically understood that budgetary limitations can force unpleasant choices, such as using a drum machine. But one must aim high.
Because it must be said that this kind of laid-back folk rock really needs a live band to be entertaining. Drum machines and digital instruments do not cut it. This CD comes off like a very hastily produced songwriting demo. It’s possible that the right artist could take some of these songs, change a few of the cheesier lyrics, and make it work. And it’s also entirely possible Weber would be an adequate, even quite good, lead singer in a real band that was playing these songs. Live music would bring needed conviction to his already in-tune singing. But alone, without professionals backing him up, he’s not yet able to reach a professional level.
Our recommendation is that Weber devote more time to music, take a cold, hard look at his current state of development, and allow himself time to grow. Find musical friends who will give the unpleasant truth to him straight. Better yet, he could form a band (and not play an instrument in it). Use your home studio as a songwriting scatchpad, and then let the band members help you improve the songs and bring them to life, because the basic ideas in these songs are really not bad.
Corey Crowder — Corey Crowder, 2005. (Reviewed 2/18/2006)
Corey Crowder’s album is the simplest of productions: entirely acoustic guitar and vocal. It’s very well recorded, and especially the acoustic guitar sounds full, although the potential for lots of nuance in the playing is lost as a result of the mostly strummed parts. There’s not a lot of finger-picking.
Crowder’s songs sound like they belong on a Vertical Horizon record. It’s that “serious pop-rock” sound, and his breathy but slightly gritty vocals fit the form.
Melodies and lyrics are fine, and demonstrate musical competence, but sometimes the shapes of the melodies are a little bit too symmetrical, and build to predictable “payoff” phrases that sound a little like commercial jingles. It just doesn’t get in your heart and hook you emotionally and intellectually, render you helpless.
If you’re going to strip it down to acoustic guitar and vocal alone, there needs to be a good reason why. For example, you’re such an amazing singer that production interferes with the raw beauty of your voice. Or, your songs are, compositionally, inventive enough that they tell such a powerful story, that they enrapture the audience entirely, without needing to be dressed up.
None of this is the case with Crowder’s record. Perhaps Crowder’s reason for stripping down is budgetary. That’s excusable of course, but when budget is low, it must be compensated with stupendous innovation.
There’s nothing bad about this record, but it sounds like a songwriter demo-ing songs for Vertical Horizon, not a album worth investing serious time in. Maybe VH should take a listen! There’s no question that this is a highly capable artist with plenty of talent. And he has the ability to create important music, but this CD is not quite it.
Bob Gentry — Bob Gentry, 2005. (Reviewed 2/18/2006)
Gentry is a capable songwriter with a terrific voice that shifts suddenly from an unremarkable soft and innocent in one phrase to, in the very next phrase, a surprisingly powerful gritty wail that sounds like a cross between Bruce Springsteen and Joe Cocker.
Some critics would probably castigate Gentry for maudlin touches in his ballads, such as “Babe.” At least he goes for something big and important-sounding, a laudable aim. His lyrics, while imagistic and self-consciously thematic, can sound a little manufactured. One is not sure they are entirely his own words. Is he trying to sound — what is it, maybe a little bit tough? A little like a working-class hero? All-American rock songs like “Goldie Hawn,” somehow sound less like the honest work of an All-American guy and more like a calculated attempt to sound All-American. Springsteen gets away with this trick, and maybe Gentry could too, but only with the right producer.
Ultimately, a producer is what Gentry needs. It is our contention that it’s not at all that Gentry is inauthentic, but that his authenticity needs the room to flower that only a competent producer can provide to an artist. Gentry is obviously unbelievably talented — and this can make an artist loath to take on a producer, to entrust his music to a stranger, or even to a friend.
But where some DIY projects are lent an honest lovability by their homemade quality, this project is damaged by its somewhat amateur execution. The CD doesn’t sound terrible, but Gentry’s terrific voice is not recorded or mixed well. The drums sound occasionally cheap, machine-like. The transitions from soft to hard singing are too stark, and it sounds like Gentry, aware that he has golden pipes, is self-consciously making sure to yell in every song, rather like an actor who, directing himself in his own film and aware of his good looks, concentrates too much on his lighting and makeup and forgets to lose himself in the role.
Bob Gentry is extremely signable, major-label ready. Good-looking, and with those pipes, he’s the kind of artist you could imagine making it to the final 10 on American Idol — except that his writing is probably too sophisticated for the teeny-bopper crowd.
If Bob Gentry found a good producer to rein in his maudlin tendencies (only just a little bit), help him make a more judicious use of his terrific instrument, push him a little to find lyrics that represent a more authentically personal point of view, and record him properly, he could easily find his next record in our top 5.
Jaylene Johnson — Finding Beautiful, 2005. (Reviewed 2/18/2006)
Jaylene Johnson forces us at Intelligent Pop to confront a somewhat uncomfortable reality, but confront it honestly we shall. It is simply the extent to which Christian music faces an extra steep climb to scale our chart. Jaylene Johnson is a seasoned, smooth pop singer and a solid pop songwriter. Another ridiculously talented Canadian (the parade of good Canadian pop seems ceaseless), Johnson has a record which sounds like a slightly more pop version of, perhaps, a Sarah McLachlan record. And yes, it sounds that professional. (And Johnson’s vocal sounds that good.) This is one of the most professional sounding records we’ve ever had submitted to us.
Moreover, the production flourishes that populate every corner of this record, while stylistically de rigueur in this genre of what might be called “dreamy textural pop,” are still inventive and confidently accomplished beyond almost everything else you’ll hear on an album not produced by McLaclan and Rufus Wainwright producer Pierre Marchand. (Marchand is not the producer here, but almost could have been.)
So are the Christian themes on this album from label Hear Music Ministries the reason it finds itself on the outside looking in rather than rocketing toward #1? Well, I hope not. I want our charts to be open to great Intelligent Pop, and it is not the mission of Intelligent Pop to require of musicians a particular editorial point of view. The Intelligence of the music’s and lyric’s content is supposed to be the sole criterion.
We think the songwriting, while extremely competent, is just a little shallow here, and this is a problem which infects much of Christian pop. Happy and optimistic, both in melody and lyric, it somehow fails to capture fully the dark side of human existence, to dig deeply enough to explore narratives of human experience that are more complicated than mere redemption stories. This album is indeed full of the spirit of redemption, of Angels, of light-hearted musings on what it might be like to “stir the seas,” as God does.
To our ears, it sounds, perhaps, just a tiny bit shallow. To more faithful ears, however, this album might have an entirely different ring.
The question is whether our criticism is entirely fair, because to be honest, there is at least a small chance that, had this record not been a Christian record (and even still, it is not blatantly so), it might have at least cracked the top 20. I do think the “shallowness” of its writing (for lack of a better word — the melody and lyric writing is very professional, just not quite intellectually wowing) would have prevented it from achieving single-digit status even were it secular. But there remains a nagging feeling that, while I think it’s right that Finding Beautiful is not quite right for our charts, this says something unexpected about our chart and its judgment criteria: that there might be a bias against sacred music built into it that had not been intended. This bias feels proper to me, but I’m not sure I’m capable of articulating why.
On the other hand, I’m not sure we’re entirely anti-sacred, so long as an album’s sacredness is handled in a certain way. There is, in our chart, a deeply committed Christian whose music occasionally makes reference to spiritual themes. Busbee, a stratospheric #3 as of this writing, is an artist who, rather than evangelizing, simply includes his faith as one of the themes about which he writes. He writes about faith not because it’s his mission to testify publicly, but because his mission is to write authentically about his personal experience, and that experience includes faith. In this way, his music remains classifiable as secular, and his explorations of faith become explorations of the variegated human experience that even non-Christians can identify with, appreciate, learn from, and most importantly, enjoy deeply.
Perhaps this is the difference between Jaylene Johnson and Busbee. In the end, from a purely artistic standpoint, it’s probably fair to say Busbee’s composition and performance seem to carry just a little more sophistication — a little more tragedy, a little more ambivalence, to go along with moments of simple redemption and certainty that are more representative of Johnson’s record. This is, perhaps, the essence of the difference between music that is sacred and music that’s secular-yet-spiritual. For my money, Busbee’s approach is unintentionally more effective as an instrument of religious conversion.
Johnson’s music remains most effective as a message to her own, Christian, audience. If you are a part of the already-converted, however, visit her website now, and buy this record with your very next mouse click. You will not be sorry! It is beautifully executed, Johnson has a wonderful voice, and there’s no reason why Jaylene Johnson shouldn’t be one of the premiere Christian pop artists working today.
There is a letter to the editor addressing this review. Check it out here.
Pat Cusick — Rhymes with Music, 2005. (Reviewed 2/18/2006)
It’s difficult to distinguish straightforward blues-based bar-band rock’n’roll as particularly original or innovative. The style does not lend itself easily to melodic invention in the tradition of Paul McCartney, or to harmonic sophistication in the tradition of Steely Dan.
Cusick has an energetic collection of 7 well-written songs that sounds like a well-done recording of a veteran, tight live bar band. Occasionally, the band strays into more ethereal territory, a welcome innovation they handle well. Through it all, they continue to sound like a live band that did everything in one take. At this level of tightness, this organic, live quality is a hell of an accomplishment, although on more textured pieces, it might represent a missed opportunity to utilize the studio to its fullest.
Cusick is a fine rock singer, and his delivery has not a whiff of dishonesty to it. But his voice is not remarkable — and would have to be more amazing to lift this rather ordinary rock to a higher level. The lyrics are not bad. But they’re not particularly unexpected, either: “Amelia hold me. Carry me across the sky. Amelia, guide me as I learn to fly,” sings Cusick. It’s not knocking us out, but it’s not offensive either.
In the final analysis, this is probably not a perfect match for the Intelligent Pop genre. It is essentially gentle blues-rock, and it’s the tightness of the band and the danceable live-sounding organic grooves (yes, those grooves are quite tasty, and the guitar work is rhythmic and satisfying) that bolster competent but undemanding songs, along with a superbly competent recording with that 1970s “brown sound,” that recommends this band. If you enjoy 1970s era American album-oriented blues-rock, and you like it sounding entirely live, this CD is a worthwhile purchase. Cusick does it well.
The artist responds:
Dear editor:
Thanks for the comprehensive review of the my demo CD. You were honest, and that's hard to come by these days. While I welcome constructive criticism, I thought some of your review to be a little unfair.
Of course it's not a "serious professional product". It's a demo, recorded with minimal equipment and one player -- me. You stated on your Website you accept CD-R's, so I reluctantly sent it to you.
My disappointment in the review is that you gave too much attention to the quality of the production, rather than the songs themselves.
At the same time, I agree with your assessment that a real band would be better suited to perform and record the material. I am well aware my keyboard skills aren't great, but I consider myself more a singer/songwriter than a piano player. Think about all the great songwriters who played guitar or piano just well enough to get by. Burt Bacharat comes to mind. John Lennon played minimal piano on "Imagine" and it was a monster hit.
In summary, I'm not surprised you didn't like my CD. After all, you list your favorites as Sting, Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel -- three artists I find utterly repulsive. My considerable fan base in Louisville would probably disagree with your review as well — especially the part about the "cheesy lyrics". My lyrics appeal to the everyman. It may not be "intelligent pop", but it's music for the masses.
Thanks
Roger Weber
You can check our Weber's music for yourself at www.cdbaby.com/rogerweber2