Cold Lake Flight School is the one-man project of Joshua Alan Johnston. Now before I begin I feel I should say this, I've read some myspace profiles in my time but this one takes the cake. I honestly wish I hadn't read it while listening to his album as I was about half way through and am now somewhat against it. You see Mr. Johnston has produced the single most pretentious myspace profile I've ever read and upon reading it I wanted to instantly detest every musical note that he had created. The description of how he packaged his albums as well made me want to kick him in the face for every word of it that screamed, "I'M QUIRKY! LOVE ME!"
Perhaps I'm just a grumpy young man, perhaps Joshua Alan Johnston is in fact a lovely young man who just wants to encourage folk to play music. Quite frankly, I don't know. It could be the former, it could be the latter, it could be a bit of both. So I will do my utmost to review this fairly. For if I sat here and called him pretentious throughout half the review then it'd be the pot calling the kettle black.
So onward we go: I've found this album has given me seriously mixed feelings. Half the time I'm thinking by the balls o' St. Christopher this fella is a pretentious and boring singer songwriter, then every now and again I hear bursts of brilliance in his musical arrangements and lyrics. For the most part Joshua Alan Johnston is nothing special, he is a bog standard, entirely average, mediocre singer-songwriter. His average voice goes with his average lyrics. The flashes of brilliance come in the form of the fuller musical arrangements, which for a fella who's on his own are actually vaguely impressive.
His voice consistently grates on me and the harmonizing with himself gets old quickly as he uses it, a lot. The same applies for how he has his guitar recorded, it's the same sound and same style and is probably why the fuller arrangements are so welcome. On "It Hit The Land" and "Loose Feathers" the arrangement is welcome but it's still dreadfully boring and an incredibly average song. To be brutally honest, The Great Dry Lake is boring. His voice and guitar style are so very very bland, average, boring, mediocre, etc. His lyrics are hit and miss, they sometimes show promise like on "Writers" where he almost gets some endearing quirkiness going but falls short overall. If he gets a full band he could probably do alright, because some of the backing playing is good and strong. Till that day he goes in my box marked "AVERAGE SINGER-SONGWRITER."
So onward we go: I've found this album has given me seriously mixed feelings. Half the time I'm thinking by the balls o' St. Christopher this fella is a pretentious and boring singer songwriter, then every now and again I hear bursts of brilliance in his musical arrangements and lyrics. For the most part Joshua Alan Johnston is nothing special, he is a bog standard, entirely average, mediocre singer-songwriter. His average voice goes with his average lyrics. The flashes of brilliance come in the form of the fuller musical arrangements, which for a fella who's on his own are actually vaguely impressive.
His voice consistently grates on me and the harmonizing with himself gets old quickly as he uses it, a lot. The same applies for how he has his guitar recorded, it's the same sound and same style and is probably why the fuller arrangements are so welcome. On "It Hit The Land" and "Loose Feathers" the arrangement is welcome but it's still dreadfully boring and an incredibly average song. To be brutally honest, The Great Dry Lake is boring. His voice and guitar style are so very very bland, average, boring, mediocre, etc. His lyrics are hit and miss, they sometimes show promise like on "Writers" where he almost gets some endearing quirkiness going but falls short overall. If he gets a full band he could probably do alright, because some of the backing playing is good and strong. Till that day he goes in my box marked "AVERAGE SINGER-SONGWRITER."
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ReplyDeleteit should be noted that since posting, the myspace profile has been edited.
ReplyDeletepower of the media eh?