Let’s face it; pop songs all tend to sound the same. There’s only so many ways you can vary how much you love someone or how mad at him or her you are.
At times, maybe the lyrics can be irrelevant if the melodies and songs are good enough so one can just get lost. In those cases, it’s easy to forget anything is being said at all.
A listen to the debut from Simple Kid, a supposed lap-folk upstart, however, is not one of those times. Only when lyrics are this terribly thought out does one know that whoever wrote them thinks he is doing something great. Even more infuriating, Simple Kid evokes some of the more basic elements of folk music — a genre that, if you didn’t know, was dependent on intelligent lyrical statements.
Simply put, “Simple Kid 1,” (Vector Recordings) as the album is unoriginally titled, is terribly conceived.
On paper, the whole updating of the very old genre of folk with electronic sounds may not seem a bad idea.
Again, though, folk is about what an artist is saying, or at least it used to be. Apparently, this innovation implies borrowing from every sort of “rootsy” music that has ever been produced, and draining all of the life out of it under a few strategically placed laptop beats and some of the worst lyrical hooks you’re bound to hear.
Apparently, McFeely has some real angst built up, for he “just wants a hooker with a heart of gold.” There are other insulting attempts at word juxtaposition such as “breakups lead to breakdowns,” and “because we just don’t know who we are, lowly supertramps or superstars.”
And, to top it off, there’s the chorus that pays no attention to grammar, again a failed play-on-words: “Hey man/don’t let your ego/you might as well be staring at the sun.”
If that doesn’t make you want to bang your head against the wall, you could always look to the music, which is about as bland as the lyrics. Basically, it’s an 11-song genre exercise.
The opening riff to “Breakups Breakdowns” was literally lifted from The Kinks, and the harmonica solo on “Kids Don’t Care” is precisely Bob Dylan. At some points, it even seems he uses the same note patterns.
As difficult as it is to forgive such thievery, perhaps if the electronic elements gave a fresh feel to the music, McFeely would have something of substance, but that, too, staggers.
As many do, McFeely loves to play with his laptop, but his arrangements are so stiff that any of the musical output his hours in the basement have produced is mere background noise to give the music that supposed “modern feel.”
At times, the idea of using “laptop sounds” is reduced to a little blip to keep the beat — hardly electronic music. “Drugs” has an interesting electronic intro, but it dies as soon as the song starts in favor of an over-produced full band feel. By the time the electronic sounds work their way back into the mix, they accomplish nothing for the song but perhaps an interesting keyboard line.
McFeely just can’t seem to get a handle on how to transition parts or combine his electronic feel with the organic one he obviously wants to keep in the mix somehow.
Combine all of this with his shifting vocal tones that range from a terrible Dylan knockoff to a high-pitch, off-key coo, and boy does this album sink.
