|
|
|
BANDS: Punk
& Ska INTERESTS: Venues ETC... About LOTD
|
Chris Ayer:
Static (EP)
You cant deny Chris Ayers skill at expressing infectious cheerfulness and mellow introspection with the acoustic guitar. There are a lot of things to like about his new release, Static. Songs like the intro track, Fade, or the peppy Undone go down like John Mayer and must do a lot to make eager, test-stressed Stanford students scream and shout when he plays live. Interestingly, the lyrics provided show only one select stanza from each song, which to me seems to emphasize their poetry and to focus on the underlying theme of each track. To others, however, it may be a small frustration, but its still better than having no lyrics at all. After repeated listening and enjoying some of the quick mentioned above and the slow, such as Ayers Babylon Falling, it hit me why I could see this as doing OK with sales, but maybe having difficulty going beyond that. For Ayers talent and skill at writing songs, I can say that I have heard many other artists in college towns in my neck of the woodssuch as Charlottesville, VA, home to the University of Virginiathat sound very much like him. Lets call it college town acoustic rock. In fact, after considering this, I was a bit startled to see in his web sites bio that he is indeed from Virginia (hmmmmCharlottesville?), but now lives in the San Francisco area. It almost seemed to make sense after that. Once exposed to that college town acoustic rock sound, its hard to miss, and it takes a unique type of talent to escape that kind of uniformity. But time is still young for this artist, and finding an individual sound is part of the creative process. That, to be fair, is a somewhat provincial argument, which might not affect other aficionados of good acoustic rock from other areas, or even those who dont live near a college town, perhaps. Just give him a listenhe might sound new to you.
This album can be purchased at the Chris Ayer Official Website About LOTD Contact/Staff Advertise Home All content © LEFT OFF THE DIAL 2001-2005. All rights reserved. |
