TINY ANIMALS – Sweet Sweetness

Sweet Sweetness indeed! Usually an album title doesn’t give much insight to the music contained within its contents, but in this case New York City’s Tiny Animals bring the sugar with their debut album. Unfortunately, it lacks the spice but does come through with everything that is “nice.” The 12 tracks featured on this album are highly polished and over-produced in their sound, giving the album a very plastic feel. The effects laid over the vocals of Chris Howerton makes him sound like Weird Al Yankovic (no joke). Musically, the material presented is very straight forward in its structure. They definitely stayed within the lines and refrained from any musical improvisation or exploration. This gives the album a simple and safe feel; safe for mainstream acceptance. Lyrically, there isn’t much depth here; a lot of teen angst and stories of growing pains. They do strip down the super-pop sound with the string driven song “Avalanche”, a moment that provides some flesh to this very synthetic album. If you are a fan of pop rock genre, you might want to check these guys out. As for me, my musical sweet tooth can only take so much manufactured material.

(North Street Records, 88 E. 3rd St. Suite #1, New York, NY 10003)

DANIEL FRANCIS DOYLE – We Bet Our Money On You

One of the most beautiful things about the World Wide Web is the fact that pretty much anyone can self-publish their art and expose it to the masses. Be it audio or visual, the internet allows artists to connect to a world which would have been unattainable in the past.

In the case of Daniel Francis Doyle’s new album, We Bet Our Money On You, it’s a double-edged sword. With Doyle on vocals and drums, the tracks on this album play like an out of tune music box. The majority of the songs featured here end up sounding repetitive, with oddly timed drumming set to a marching beat and random guitar plucking that verge on the boarder of being annoying. There seems to be an attempt by Doyle to style his vocals to that of David Byrne from Talking Heads, but it falls flat from the start. Softer tracks like “Your Baby Is Speaking” actually give some much needed heart and body to this mess of an album, but it doesn’t redeem it enough to be worthy of a recommendation.

By the seventh track entitled “How Can You Work?” I was asking the same thing of my ears, as the same repetitive musical formula was being played once again. Honestly, I’m only one person, and understandably one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, but I just don’t see the attraction here.

(We Shot JR Records, PO Box 720291, Dallas, TX 73372)