{"id":11527,"date":"2012-03-13T13:33:29","date_gmt":"2012-03-13T17:33:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/?p=11527"},"modified":"2012-04-07T10:31:37","modified_gmt":"2012-04-07T14:31:37","slug":"bryan-dunn-sweetheart-of-the-music-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/13\/bryan-dunn-sweetheart-of-the-music-hall\/","title":{"rendered":"Bryan Dunn Sweetheart of the Music Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bryan Dunn<\/a> is releasing a new CD on April 6th, 2012. He\u2019s performing a CD Release Show at Rockwood Music Hall<\/a> Stage 2 at 7pm. I\u2019ll be there, you should be too.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s rare that I review CDs (before or after they are released). Mostly because I\u2019m not a trained music critic\/theoretician, nor a musician either. When I read reviews, they\u2019re usually covering things I wouldn\u2019t think to say, nor would I necessarily feel comfortable saying them even if I thought of it. \"Winking<\/p>\n

So why bother reviewing this as-yet-unreleased CD? Because it\u2019s worth it<\/strong>! Last Thursday we saw Jesse Terry<\/a> play a show at Rockwood. Bryan happened to be in the audience and happened to bring a CD to give to Jesse. When Lois asked him whether he had some more on him, he did one and we bought it.<\/p>\n

The last two lines of the post about Jesse\u2019s show<\/a> were:<\/p>\n

Lois already listened to the CD and was blown away. I\u2019ll be getting to it over the weekend.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now that I\u2019ve listened to it five times, I concur. End of review. \"Winking<\/p>\n

Well, perhaps I could be coaxed to say a few more words\u2026<\/p>\n

The overall umbrella genre\/feel of the CD is straight up Rock. By that, I mean no artificial DJ-like sounds to show off techno-wizardry, just excellent musicians making music.<\/p>\n

That said, there is quite a variety of rock styles across the songs, including Classic Rock, Country Rock, Jazz\/Swing Rock and perhaps a hint of Bluesy Rock thrown in to fool you. A couple of the songs could easily be in America\u2019s Country Countdown, in my opinion.<\/p>\n

All of that is actually secondary though, seriously. What separates Bryan from the pack are his (apparently) effortless lyrical masterpieces (song after song).<\/p>\n

The lyrics are simultaneously sophisticated and simple. Huh? What I really mean are they are sophisticated but simultaneously accessible<\/strong>. Big words aren\u2019t used to impress (and force us to look them up), they\u2019re words that are more unexpected<\/em> that paint a vivid image.<\/p>\n

Since Lois and I are drawn to great lyricists, we know a lot of them. One problem that occasionally arises is that the songwriter will fall in love with a phrase, but can\u2019t quite fit it in smoothly with the current melody and beat. The truly greats rework one or the other to make everything feel so natural that you wonder what came first, the lyrics or music. It\u2019s like a marriage made in heaven.<\/p>\n

If you couldn\u2019t tell from the above paragraph, Bryan is in the latter category. The lyrics are so perfectly intertwined with the music that you can easily listen to every word while still getting completely lost in the music. Nothing jars you out of the trance with a phrasing that clearly doesn\u2019t fit, no matter how clever<\/em> it is.<\/p>\n

I hesitate to pull out any specific lyrics. First, songs are contextual. Second, as specifically noted above, these lyrics are delivered married to the music (not that they aren\u2019t also poetic in the stand-alone sense). Still, I\u2019ll do it (under protest). This is the last verse in the song 3 Years On:<\/p>\n

I have murdered minutes
\nBut still there\u2019s so much precious time to kill
\nThe boy that she left waiting
\nI do believe he\u2019s waiting for her still
\nI wrote her a letter on a stone
\nI don\u2019t think I\u2019m ever coming home<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ve murdered minutes too\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the advantages of buying a physical CD is getting the liner notes (when an artist bothers to include them). We have all of the lyrics written out and Lois listened over and over with the lyrics in her hands and she continued to interrupt me while I was writing about Jesse, to tell me this line<\/em> or that line<\/em> that kept getting to her. Now I understand.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll wrap up by saying that this CD was produced by Chris Cubeta<\/a>. I only saw Chris perform for the first time last Wed night, but I\u2019ve heard about what a great producer he is for a while (specifically with regard to the upcoming The Vanity Belles<\/a> CD), and now I hear his work first hand.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, on Marlene, which has a lot of Swing elements to it, the use of the clarinet (Hideaki Aomori<\/a>) fits perfectly. On other numbers he employs a trumpet or accordion (Michael Leonhart<\/a> and JP Schlegelmilch<\/a> respectively).<\/span><\/p>\n

OK, I\u2019m drifting into the territory that makes me uncomfortable, so I\u2019ll just stop here. Come to Rockwood Music Hall Stage 2 at 7pm on April 6th and judge for yourself. Bryan will have physical CDs for sale there, so you can then experience what we\u2019ve been enjoying for the past five days! \"Smile\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bryan Dunn is releasing a new CD on April 6th, 2012. He\u2019s performing a CD Release Show at Rockwood Music Hall Stage 2 at 7pm. I\u2019ll be there, you should be too. It\u2019s rare that I review CDs (before or after they are released). Mostly because I\u2019m not a trained music critic\/theoretician, nor a musician […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2],"tags":[652,1091,1250,1251,942,1252,1367,493],"class_list":["post-11527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-2","tag-bryan-dunn","tag-cd-review","tag-chris-cubeta","tag-hideaki-aomori","tag-jp-schlegelmilch","tag-michael-leonhart","tag-music","tag-rockwood-music-hall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11527"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12517,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11527\/revisions\/12517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}