Anna Lea Pudan - The Long Road

Hear The Track Here

As many of you know, I am the father of twins so the first thing that jumped out of Anna Lea Pudan's page was that she is a twin. Her and her sister started musically at a very early age, although never it seems professionally. Now, at this stage of the game, all Anna wants is "hope to interest people in the lyrics and tunes and I want to be recognized as the author and composer of my songs". Can't think of a better place than Soundclick to do this. Anna is a new name to me obviously but she is already chalking up some very influential Stations playing her material so I was much interested to see what she was about. First off, I have to say the copy of The Long Road I had contained some serious rendering problems, which may be a problem for a track that is on sale for almost 1 US dollar (50p to me). You know I have nothing against people who want to sell their music, that's their right. I do have a problem, however, with shoddy product - that affects us all and only reinforces the 'indie music is rubbish' mindset that seems to prevail in the real world.

Ooops, sorry, didn't realise this was a party political review ;)

As it happens, Anna is a songwriter first and foremost and that much is obvious from the get go. Musically, The Long Road is sparse to the extreme, hanging on a guitar figure, a solitary bass and the slightest of percussion effects. At least that way, there's not much to go wrong is there? It provides the most basic framework to highlight the song itself and that's the way it should be in a situation where the song is the thing. On that score, Anna Lea Pudan has the right voice to tackle this "sort of spiritual, bluesy" material, although in no way as powerful as say, Maria Daines. Nonetheless, she does a very decent job of getting the message of the song across and when that is your expressed intention, I'd say you are doing OK.

Apart from the sparseness of the musical content, the track itself definitely shows the bare bones of a good track and one I would like to hear with a much more rounded production but we all work with what we've got, don't we? On that score, I'd say Anna Lea Pudan has a certain something going for her. In my time reviewing online I have met lots of good songwriters, and The Long Road is as good as anyone elses first attempts. Time will tell, of course, and with a couple of years on this scene under her belt (and hopefully some collaborations with other musicians), Anna has the potential to carve herself out a peice of Soundclick she can call her own. There really isn't much more that can be said actually because this is basically a demo for a song; worth a listen for sure, but to buy??? Mmmmmmm.

Good song, flawed recording.