Brandon Adamson, Costume Drama

Do you remember being a little kid and listening to tapes (how ancient is that?) in the car that taught you the alphabet or all fifty states and stuff like that? And how it was really cheesy-sounding music that was probably programmed on a Casiotone by some thirty-year-old that still lived in his mom’s basement? Well, that’s kind of what Brandon Adamson’s Costume Drama sounds like. The songs themselves are not particularly shoddy; it’s just the production.

The subjects of the tunes seem cliché at first — stuff about girls, breakups, self-pity. But a closer look exposes the barbed-wire lyrics that put a nasty twist on the whole thing. His voice, while not Bono, is mellow and vaguely pre-pubescent. You’d expect lines about adoring some hippie goddess, but instead he’s referring to some bitch that ripped his heart in two. And he’s pissed. It’s nice. This angst-filled young bedroom music maker, his next step, after these glass-shard lyrics, is to sync his voice up. It sounds too much like an audio book. He needs to let loose and allow his frustration to seep into his delivery. Let the irony and disgust drip, Brandon, let it drip from your angered lips.

But then that production kicks in. The instrumentation is primarily keyboard/synth-based, which is not necessarily bad in theory, but it’s bad synths. The cheesy things they used to program that shit about memorizing states I told you about. It’s all too MIDI-sounding. If he found himself a Farfisa organ, a melodica, and a nice old synth, he’d settle into that warm, analog world. And then it might work. In fact, it would probably work very well. You’re on the right path, Brandon; all you need to do is dive into a musical dumpster of lo-fi goodness. (The reviewer apologizes for ignoring the reader and addressing Brandon directly.)