Goldmund - Famous Places
Right away, this album made me think of the album 'Postcards From' by Fiona Brice. A bit later, I realized that they have very much the same concept going on: Minimalist piano arrangements; each named after a place in the world (Although only the Brice album sticks to the idea 100% of the way).
I can probably best describe my feelings about this Goldmund album by comparing it with the Fiona Brice album.
Where Brice's album spans an interesting range of expressions, this Goldmund album quickly starts feeling like it all blends together in my mind. The former is also much more emotionally poignant to me, whereas the latter feels more like some kind of TV commercial half the time. These melodies are simply too banal and obvious and there's just no hint of any sort of nuanced approach to harmonic construction. I don't know much about musical theory, but I can still hear that the Goldmund album has a very limited approach to key signatures and chords. It just all feels so obvious and so lacking in matured songwriting sensibilities. This artist knows of only one mood: Twinkly prettiness. The Brice album actually very sucessfully instills each piece with a unique character of it's own, giving the sense that each piece was written at a different place in the world, with a different mindset and I believe she actually did travel to all of those places. The Goldmund album seems to suggest that all places in the world feel the same to him/her.
Based on my impression of this album, Goldmund feels like a very young artist who is still new at this sort of thing. Brice, comparatively, feels like a seasoned pro with a strong command of composition and harmonic structure.
The sound quality and musicianship on the Goldmund album is, as such, flawless. It isn't bad music by any means, but I can't imagine ever wanting to go back to this either. It severaly lacks personality and memorable musical ideas. There's a very strong sense of banality to the album, which makes the PBS documentery muzak comparison of the above poster depressingly accurate.
Listened to: 1 time, plus a few returns to earlier tracks for a reminder/double check.
Rating: 4/10, which on my scale, isn't so bad. It's just profoundly unremarkable, but didn't actively turn me off.
I would have rated it lower were it not for a few brief moments where everything came together a bit better. Mostly, it's pretty bland, so that kind of kills it for me.
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I would love to like something for a change. Otherwise, The Album Club should be renamed The Torture Dungeon.
Oh well... there's always next week...