Link: Patrick Phelan
The Inside Pulse:
Breathy vocals, repetitive (but not quite mesmerizing) melodies and minor keys your thing? Do the bleakest cuts from Radiohead or Pink Floyd albums leave you feeling a little too hopeful? Step right up. The cover says plenty about this album. What might at first glance seem like a whitewashed image of flowers turns out to be a soft material cut to suggest very large bullet holes. Also, like the cover, this is not a dark album. It’s sterile, not messy — although it shows the signs of damage having been done. In the end, the artwork is, unfortunately, far more interesting than the music. The good news for the “gloomy but not goth” set is that Patrick Phelan is still indie/unknown enough that you will likely find yourself the first of your friends (if you find friends worthwhile) to own this disk.
Positives:
The man knows how to sustain a mood.
The production and technical musicianship are very good.
Repeated listening to this album is an ultra-hip cry for help.
Negatives:
“I made you suffer. I lied to you.” This is the most intelligible lyric on the album, tellingly on the only track that hints at organic life.
If you don’t bring your own pain to the party, this album seems to go out of its way to avoid impact.
The mastery of instuments never adds up to a worthwhile song, instead offering listless accompaniment to Phelan’s weak vocals.
Cross-breed:
OK Computer minus any obvious emotion other than isolation with an artic ice-scape
Reason to buy:
You want to find a point of comparison for your own isolation without any scary tempo or mood changes.
