John Vanderslice – Romanian Names Review
One of my pet peeves when reading John Vanderslice reviews’ is people pointing out that his albums focused too much on being “average” or being happy with being mediocre. I really whole-heartedly believe that it’s not true. While there’s nothing wrong with being more of an extrovert as a musician, the goal to try to be “amazing” at times hinders artists. For Vanderslice, his strength relies on his song writing. He likely doesn’t wow with his vocals or slow acoustic style but then again not many artists do. With his work it’s about listening to the lyrics, so no his work was never happy with being “average” or “mediocre”. Perhaps people weren’t trying hard enough. (I still can’t get over the idea of some people finding mediocrity in Emerald City)
Anyway (to get away from my angry rant), John Vanderslice is a singer-songwriter from Gainesville, Florida. Like many singer-songwriters, he usually puts his political ideas into the fray – perhaps subtly but his writing style appeals to me nonetheless. It’s not lame either (cough the Beck album I didn’t like). This album isn’t really political – at least it seems more personal. Still you get the idea that Vanderslice just says what’s on his mind “Freedom is overrated” as he would like to put it on “Too Much Time”.
I’d like to say that first, I don’t like the album as much as Emerald though on it’s own it’s still pretty good. Songs are shorter – so less emotionally involved but are good in that short amount. Perhaps what some critics would call “trying to have fans”. I’ve read a lot of BS reviews so sorry for being angry. Calling this album boring is no longer an excuse for critics but I think he may have gone a little away from what Emerald City great. The album is more on the average side when it comes to lyricism and the songs are more structured like down tempo pop songs. They are still good, just pointing out that the album could come off as more average to the ones who liked his previous work.
Vanderslice is still an artist I respect a whole lot, and this album I have no real qualms, perhaps more so his naysayers I have the issue with. He`s a great person in indie rock and he loves bloggers too (he had a whole blogger event with his last disc that was really awesome).
Rating: 4.25 out of 5
Too Much Time by John Vanderslice
Tremble and Fear by John Vanderslice
Tags: album
