Carl J Hallahan - Warp

Hear The Track Here

Although he is a Soundclick artist (and a new name to me) Carl J Hallahan came to me through my review blog - as an increasing number of people are doing these days. There again, being the musical slut I seem to have become it doesn't matter to me where it comes from; I'll take it from anyone, anywhere and at anytime (Ed: that's quite enough of that kind of talk, I think). From what I can gather Carl is an acoustic artist from Florida who says 'I began playing more seriously in early 2007...', a situation a great many other musicians will recognise. There do seem to be a lot of people who flirted with music when they were younger only to pick it up in earnest later on in life. Nothing wrong with that. A bit of life's experiences do indeed make for better, more well rounded music IMHO.

Best not to quote me on that though.

Out of all the musical genres available to us, acoustic has got to be the worst one to render digitally; something about acoustic instruments and vocals that makes recording insanely hard to get right. So the very first hurdle to get me to like an acoustic track is to get the sound right and thankfully Carl also seems to understand that. Although there is the almost inevitable 'home produced' feel about the track (especially in the backing vocals), I personally think Carl did a real good job at laying this track down. At least he didn't load it down with lots of sound and fury signifying not very much. Doesn't matter how much you put in a track as distraction, if the song doesn't cut it without other accompaniment, it won't help to keep adding to the problem.

Carl obviously knows a lot better than this, so technically I think he should pat himself on the back. Musically, I don't know whether Warp (which is nothing like as spacey as it sounds, obviously the OTHER warp) is just not my cup of tea is whether its just not a very good song. It has a gloomy, doomy approach that doesn't help the overall plod of the track, although the guitars help a lot to alleviate that effect. It's very unfair to Carl of course. Just because I don't like this style. I also know there are plenty of people who do and judged by that criteria Warp is nothing whatsoever to feel ashamed about, and a lot to feel proud of. Leonard Cohen fans will lap this up, and that's for sure.

Slow, moody acoustic, lovingly rendered.