Andy Mitchell - The Well Travelled Road LP

Hear The Track Here

Even though I place a high priority on the technical side of things, I am not crazy enough to think that this is the only thing that matters. As you know, with me it is, first and foremost, the song. Unless, of course, it's an instrumental (as is most one man band music these days) in which case it better be awesome because I think I speak for the rest of humanity when I say there are more than enough instrumentals. Thank God for the singer/songwriters I say, and I've never imagined a scenario where I would write that because there was a time when I hated them something fierce. See, EVERYTHING gets a little dose of venom :)

Andy Mitchell is a self confessed one-man show and The Well Travelled Road is his latest release, an LP consisting of eleven tracks in an Alternative rock style that - although rough in places - shows Andy knows his way around a song. There were tracks I did get (Moon In The Night, Hold My Breath, For You etc ) but then there were tracks where the recording limitations Andy is working with mar the proceedings. Overall, this is a very noisy album, and when there is a lot going on, a clear mix is essential and many of the tracks suffer because of this. Stylistically, I liked what Andy was about, and the acoustic numbers really show his potential. Most of the time though, you are trying to sort through the mix which does take work for the listener and that shouldn't happen.

One of the major pitfalls of unsigned tracks, and many bedroom musicians, is that they take a while to learn the disciplines that crafting a great track demands. Sure, production features big-time because that is what the competition is up to. Much more to the point, bedroom musicians tend to either not notice or pass those little flubs, vocal/instrumental mis-tunings,machine noise that commercial music filters out. There are internet musicians who do it like the big dogs, but they are generally more experienced in the arcane arts of production, arrangement and (crucially) mixing and that takes time. Mind you, I felt much the same about Pidgeman (who Andy reminds me of) some years ago and he has come on like gangbusters of late, and Andy has something going on here that should be followed up.

Recommended (if noisy) Alternative Rock.