This CD was produced and assisted by SCOTT SOLTER. whose own album we have recently reviewed.
There isn’t a lot in common musically, but the same serious attitude and perfectionist ambition imbues each project.
LIAM SINGER plays elaborate piano parts, does most of the singing and adds other instruments, especially Theremin, as required.
Personally I find the piano a little clumsy. It is presented as "classical" in style, but while challenging in places and accurately played it isn't fully developed or particularly expressive. Compared to the John Lennon school of piano playing, it’s advanced stuff … but compared to (say) England's HUW WARREN who plays "serious" piano on jazz and folk albums, the touch is heavy and the general sound lacks finesse. Maybe it’s a two stools problem - not loose and unobtrusive enough for pop, not delicate or scintillating enough for classical. As a listener, I'm happy to switch, but I don’t enjoy the sense that this is half way between the two. If it’s going to be classical I want it sublime, If it’s going to be adventurous pop music, I want it to drop the affectations and ornaments and go straight to the sensation.
Musically the very first track "The Hero, The Cube And The Flower" hesitates between Reich's "Piano Phase" and exercises based on Gershwin or Bernstein. Later in the CD we have Glass-influenced material and some nice prepared piano that could be from a college composition exercise. The album also has sections of concert singer material with friends brought in to match the style and standard of the piano playing. Worthy, but not compelling.
The general structure is difficult to follow. There are fourteen tracks, from just under a minute to five and half minutes each, making 35 minutes of music all told. Following the instrumental overture, "Losing Teeth" is an elaborate but serviceable song, "Frozen Lake / Pet Heaven" then starts out as if to follow the piano song template, but no song arrives and we cycle through some fairly predictable shifts and changes, with a theatrical but shapeless Theremin solo opening half way through. The end plays out as a mirror of the introduction, with further mournful Theremin. It’s all a bit unresolved, rather Nymaneque in it’s filmic aspiration, but not so quietly assured as that might suggest.
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After that "One Breath Out" could be Chris de Burgh or Christopher Cross. There's even a snugly Christmasy chorus. Immediately following it is one of the rather forced interludes with May Beatty singing in a schooled style without there being anything inherently attractive in the voice itself.
Back then to the arpeggiated piano and some gradual additions of tuned percussion and an organ part, with a near tune never quite breaking out of the repeated introductory phrase. Eventually some double tracked trumpet joins the fray .. But the harmonic and melodic pattern is set too firmly by now and it trails off into an interminable five minutes plus.
The rest of the album continues with the fits starts and changes of mind, switching between sad piano songs and over-ambitious stabs at film score orchestration. Trying very hard to listen closely, I'm uncomfortably aware that it is only 35 minutes long, but feels a lot longer. The main feature for the second half is "Left Ventricle/Tone Clusters" played mostly on the organ. It has the repetitive urgency of something by Reich, but none of the magic. It’s earnest, and a little deadly. Again, the technical demands are beyond most pop performers, but still wouldn’t win prizes in the academy.
Final track "Morning In The Glass City" has a more promising unity, a simple piano tune embedded in some effective percussive notes. Less artifice, much more music.
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