Discerning Study Into New Album and Video Releases

Track-by-track reviews of full-length albums and a new video release provide the creative focus for this month of March springtime DCW Feature.  Previously covered artists from trusted recording labels have released brand new work that justify attentive listening, followed by deep dive analysis.  With the literary details of this review now fully completed, one is encouraged to read along and experience the sights and sounds of these musical artists latest creations.

North Carolina based singer-songwriter Chris Church is no stranger to this websites musical realm. When first introduced by the inimitable label Big Stir Records, the album “Darling Please” garnered a glowing review here. That was followed up a year or so later with a full analysis of the brilliant “Radio Transient.” Now Chris is back with a brand new album “Obsolete Path” which is once again released on the Big Stir label.  Exploring the elements of power pop, Americana, hard rock and new wave, a proper listen and analysis of the music created follows below.

You can’t help but set the correct thematic direction by opening your album with it’s title track. Surrounding that proposition with boldly strummed, resonant acoustic guitar chords serve the stated lyrics well. The defiance of concrete and sensible decision making (“refusing to do the math”) is a fork in the road wisdom choice for those who’ve lived enough decades to recognize it. The albums first single release “Sit Down” trades the acoustic for some big time electric guitar work. The drums are loud and forceful and hooky riffs abound all around. Chris adds a processed sheen to his vocals as he ruminates about being “older” and “out of the frame” as a veteran journeyman rocker surveying the current music landscape. The ultimate rebellion in stating “I’m not going anywhere” sits well next to the catchy repeated title line vocal harmony.

Check out this super fun video created by Lori Franklin, featuring Brian Beaver (drums), Lindsay Murray (backing vocals) and some cool mini-instruments!

It’s hard not to think of classic era Fleetwood Mac when listening to what Chris already admits is “perhaps the Lindsey Buckingham-iest song [he’s] ever written” with the reverse-logic romantic “I Don't Wanna Be There.” In fact, with such a prominent, driving bass line, perhaps it’s actually John McVie who deserves some credit as well. The clever lyrical turn is that no matter how enticing a locale, it’s not worth being there without the one you love along as well.  Fourth track (and follow-up single) “She Looks Good in Black” is one of those titles that’s so good, you wonder if it came first and the rest of the song then built around it. A slice of almost-country meets Americana, the lyrics make you chuckle. “I had to let go of her hand, She left to see a satanic band, The devil’s got me beat again” is how the opening strains go. Her knowing “exactly what to wear” (along with the obvious black clothing there was “dead flowers in her long dark hair”). Ultimately hoping “she had a real good time” and that at the very least “the evil was sublime” the track itself is a riff and harmony loaded toe-tapper.

There’s a wonderful balance on the lyrically caustic, musically angular alty-rocker (and focus track) “Life On A Trampoline.” The instrumental motion (a churning back and forth) suggests the up and down movements of that bouncing device. However, the lyrics come down hard on those always “saying the same thing,” who’ll “say anything” because “you’re just dying just to be heard” and “live to be seen.” In the end “it’s all the same – no matter what you think you mean – you’re saying the same thing” (over and over).  The first co-written track (with his wife Lori Franklin) “Running Right Back to You” emphasizes big electrified power chords, pummel-hard drumming and prominent bass guitar. Sweet harmonies lace the title line chorus, while new-to-this-writer word “limerance” (it means “obsessive infatuation”) provides an opportunity for vocabulary expansion. Bonus points for the heavy metal guitar solo towards the end.

The only non-newly written track comes just-past the albums midpoint with initially penned 20 years ago “Tell Me what You Really Are.” Initially acoustic guitar, singer-songwriter driven, the full band comes in on the second verse and remains throughout. A love song in it’s purest sense, although written from a second meeting years later point of view. Once again, a sinewy electric guitar solo just past the bridge adds musical weight to it all.  Old western twang is the order of the day on country-tinged “The Great Divide.” The overall vibe is Glenn Frey fronted Eagles, easy-groove California rock and roll. Even the harmonies roll in like a long lost relative to mega hit “Take It Easy.” A noticeable descending bass guitar line stands out the title explained lyrics “even if it’s the great divide, I’m on your side.”

Another Church/Franklin ("Chanklin?") co-write comes via the first-wave 80’s era computer fascination “I’m a Machine.” The fidgety interplay between bundle-of-nerves guitar chords, bass and drums suggests what a band like The Police did in that time period. This couplet “nothing is too far, nothing is lame, slaying and ghosting, re-earning the shame” sums up the overall lyrical turmoil.  The albums third co-write (with celebrated musician Bill Lloyd) “Vice Versa” opens with a gentle mandolin breeze. That quickly morphs into busy prog forms, emphasizing angular guitar figures, tom-heavy drums and counter-melody bass. A song about universal changes summed up with these lyrics “the seasons flow and time is running in a circle (and vice versa).” The gentle mandolin returns for a brief coda, complete with at-that-recording-time incidental studio chatter.

A lumbering noisy guitar and drums stoner-rock progression serves late album (and longest) track “Like A Sucker.” Instrumentally similar to those maniacal live-in-the-studio jams Neil Young & Crazy Horse get up to, the vocal delivery is more contentious. Vowing to be “fooled for the last time,” and not be “just another sucker.”  Choosing to close out the album the way it started, the acoustic guitar driven “What Are We Talking About?” is a musically sparse, lyrically focused rumination on – everything. Questions for the universe, delivered with sincerity and perhaps a glimmer of hope for the future.

The album is out via CD and Streaming worldwide on March 28, and can be ordered here at Big Stir Records

Follow Chris Church on Social Media:   Facebook   -   Instagram   -   Bandcamp

Follow Big Stir Records on their Official Website   -   Facebook   -   Instagram   -   YouTube   -   TwitterX

Two previous reviews on this site of Chris Church can be found here: “Radio Transient” and “Darling Please.” Which also qualified for each of those particular year's annual DCW Best Of.

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It was less than a year ago when this site did a thorough review the Julian Shah-Tayler (a/k/a The Singularity Music) brilliant recreation/tribute album of David Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs” on it’s 50th Anniversary. The previous year his full-length record of original songs titled “Elysium” was dissected via studious listen and analysis, as well as follow-up single “Fall Apart” six months later. Now Julian is back with a brand new album of all original songs with the curious title “Honne/Tatemae.” Those Japanese words emphasize the duality of life, with the former revealing our true feelings and desires, and the later being what we choose to display in public. A complete track-by-track review of each songs essential offering follows below.

Opening with the album’s brief introductory title track, ambient backward loops rise slowly from the mist as Julian delivers poetic spoken word musings. He states: “In the Isthmus between birth and death, let us illuminate the world with the dance of our brief candle.”  That merges into the next (and first full length) track “ForEva,” which initially floats into focus on fluttering wings before stronger percussion, synths and violins provide classical music vibes. Julian’s well-honed Bowie-esque vocals always stand out, while a very active bass guitar powers it all forward. Positive idealism shines through on it’s chorus: “If it takes forever and a day, we’ll watch this world burn away. If it takes forever and a day, you are still my destiny.”  Listen here:

A uniquely processed harsh-slap percussion track, prominent bass, metallic-stringed acoustic guitar and an extended note melody serves up third entry “Sufferation.” Vocals are delivered with that romantic croon the aforementioned Mr. B (along with acolytes like Cy Curnin of The Fixx) have done for years. Julian puts his unique touch by adding original ambiance on line endings (“through nowhere,” “life mare,” “foreverywhere,” “this love affair”) and on the dreamy chorus. “We’re lucid in our daydreams, suffocate in moonbeams - our separation . . . dislocated through our sufferation.”  

Fourth entry “Malicious Intent” adds buzzing synth behind previously established high production values focused on quick keyboard stabs matched to sharp percussion and violin textures.   A scathing warning at a “second rate mediocrity” who “started a war” to “make it stop” before this reciprocal “intent” will be forced to “burn it all down.”

Check out this Darwin Meiners mixed, Kaiber AI video for this song here:

A mechanized robotic undercurrent shares space with sheering guitars on fifth track “Bleed.” Although static in it’s forward progression, there are touches of electric funk (in that way Kraftwerk sometimes does). Especially on the chorus, which goes “Cause I don’t want to see you bleed no no no, don’t want to see you bleed.” A studio recording allows for creating vocal arrangements, which at times finds the singer taking alternating lines, approximating a duet with oneself. 

 Just past the records midpoint is the tom tom drums driven, slower burn groove “Turn To Stone.” Julian’s vocals are much less Bowie-styled, but instead closer to Simon LeBon in pitch, register and phrasing. In particular when going to falsetto on bridge sections that go “and those colors turn to grey, and these words have nothing to say.” The chorus “In the dead of night on the long way home, you suffocate and turn to stone” approximates the aforementioned SB’s mid-range. A lovely ambient change towards the end features unique keyboard textures, acoustic guitar and original repeated vocalizing on the words “You ARE.”

As previously mentioned, a detailed review of initial single (and this album’s seventh track) “Fall Apart” was presented here on this site at the end of 2023.  Read all about (and listen to) this classic 80’s style keyboard-synths driven song of heartbreak right here. 

Mysterious vibrations and plucking dulcimer sound usher in eighth entry “Fisk.”  Open space allows vocal phrasing to flourish, while classical violins provide necessary emphasis.  The chorus dabbles in electro-funk, with poetic lines “of all the fish in the sea, the biggest is me,” and “of all the birds in the sky I swoop and I dive.”  Essential repeated line “I’ll turn the pressure on” leads everything out to it’s ultimate conclusion. 

Angular synth figures dance in mathematical sequence on the cleverly titled “Buds an the Bes.”  As suspected, that title gets fleshed out to it’s universally understood meaning on a chorus that states “Before you get down on your knees - How do the birds and the bees?”  The answer to that comes in the form of two more questions, “Do they sing when they sting? Do you still sing?”  An unanticipated distorted electric guitar enters the fray, counter-balancing the prior electronic rhythms.

The albums penultimate track comes with the creatively vocalized “This Charming Life.”  Rolling out stylized “do do do do do’s” (sounding like otherworldly children), a David Sylvian-esque instrumental groove moves everything forward.  Julian frequently moves his voice into a falsetto register, both solo and harmonized with himself.   “You know I can light up the sky with fire,” stands out as essential repeated sentiment.

Julian brings in heavyweight Bowie-band instrumentalists Mike Garson and Carmine Rojas, as well as the prolific David J for final (and albums longest) song “Lights Out.”  Moody and piano sprinkled, a busy calypso-like percussive and rhythmic undercurrent is just one of numerous unpredictable elements. Garson’s jazzy piano and the overall willingness to expand traditional song structures is reminiscent of Bowie’s own later period work.  David J is a master at dropping in a simple, yet so effective standout bassline (like the one that powered “So Alive” via it’s catchy-hook end-out on that hit).  Busier bass guitar segments may also be the result of Carmine Rojas’ inclusion.  This post-apocalyptic story turns on it’s hook “after all the love is gone, will the last one on this world, please turn the lights out?” Doubling down on this sentiment, Julian concludes with the spoken word narration “we will be erased like a face drawn in sand on the edge of the sea.”

Listen to this Epic Composition here:

Follow Julian / The Singularity on their Official Website, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube

Previous DCW Features on this artist can be found here, here and here.

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A recent notification that one of Sunday Records finest bands The Proctors had put out a new video was certainly motivation to investigate.  It was only last August when this site reviewed a number of tracks from their most recent album “Snowdrops and Hot Air Balloons.”  Revisiting one of the standout songs from that album, a full video treatment is now given to “You and me and the sea.”  A new opportunity to give full attention to both this recording and it’s fresh imagery inspires the words below.

As the band is shown walking around world-famous “Brighton Palace Pier” (an English amusement park with similar historical qualities as Brooklyn’s Coney Island or New Jersey’s Asbury Park) the songs opening strains chime into focus.  Female background vocals are the first voices heard, gently singing about how “it’s just a reflection in the water.”  Shots of the band playing their guitars are intertwined with footage of the ocean, seagulls and carnival rides.  Male lead vocals seek out a “rescue remedy” for “broken hearts.”  Poetic seaside lyrics continue as “castles in the sand built by hearts of stone that could not understand” are remedied by an offer to “close your eyes and take my hand.”

Capturing the adventurous joy of a day at the beach and arcades with your friends (or in this case, your band), emotional feelings are also present too. The heart-tugging pre-chorus bridge displays this perfectly with the lines “we listen to that song, it felt like we belonged, something felt so right that day how could it all gone wrong?”  When that chorus hits, its title-line simplicity is all that is really needed. However, a second line (and repeat from the intro) “it’s just a reflection in the water” acknowledges how these memorable moments are often fleeting and ephemeral.  Just past the mid-point allows for a layered acoustic, electric and bass guitar instrumental segment.  Footage of the band in front of the Pier’s many sights (graffiti walled walkways, telephone booths) and attractions (mini-duck games, exotic ceramic cats, the crazy mouse ride, merry-go-rounds) add fun to this guitar, synth and vocal hooky composition.

Check out this wonderful song and video here:

Follow The Proctors via their Social Media on Facebook and Instagram

Engage with the dreamy Sunday Records via their links - Official Site - Facebook - Instagram – TwitterX

A previous DCW Feature on this artist can be found here.

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