Genre : Soft Rock
Website: > - here - <
Origin : United States
Eli Tidmore 's Chameleon LP is a meticulously optimized effort, highlighting the key areas of musical influence the artist deems as the most relevant ones in his personal evolution as a creator.
A keen and relentless sense for strong melodies is observable throughout the spin, dressed in myriad sense of well-researched flavors, as expressed by the mere individual moods the songs themselves choose to submit to. The character of the music is mellow at heart, yet never depressively morose enough as to make the narration overly sorrowful or elegiac, as Tidmore has an excellent sense on how/when smuggle a tidbit of irony in the mix, - usually both lyrically and musically - thereby evading shoegaze territory. Read on to know more.
As hinted at earlier, these songs are all about finding the common denominators between a verse and a chorus, as, funnily enough, the "gesture" of not approaching verse and chorus differently, tends to serve a song extremely well, and there seems to be a relative lack of artists today who already have realized this fact, let alone bringing it to succession. Aerosmith is a grandmaster of coming up with songs that hardly feature verses, they are just choruses on top of choruses.
The resultant music on this LP is often of such a natural flow, that you no longer care to distinguish the individual parts, instead, you just submit and appreciate the underlying logic and emotion. The numerous-, yet not overly-abundant precedents of how a given influencer surfaces in the context of songcraft, is definitely something that the disc manages to form into its advantage, courtesy of a well thought out track order, one which seems to tell a smartly concealed overall story when you subconsciously connect the dots. Further emphasis needs to be placed on the notion on how efficiently Tidmore can play with the "chameleonesque" trait the album builds its identity on, as realizing the connection between the source and the result is extremely fun, since Tidmore does not seek to deceive and deviate, he instead admits the presence of the influence, correctly regards it as just natural - and as a tribute to the influencer - and comes up with a variation on it.
In case you wonder about some of those influences at this point, and would prefer to see some exact examples pointed at when their presence is undeniable, then consider the track called "The Next Life", in which a tremendous "Yoyo" -by Wham - influence seems to be evident, or the song called "Background", the track which Corey Taylor always listens to "Through the glass", if you feel the tactile irony, and why not do that, when the influenced song manages to come up with its own identity, doubtless fueled by the super-similar feeling, which though, was of key importance all the while. Tidmore is even bold enough to borrow a whole thought of train from Foo Fighters, then takes it into a totally different direction, and, once again, why not do that, why not cast a different light on a successful subject?
This review largely is built on the premise that Chameleon is an extremely diverse disk, and, while this statements stands true in the context of colors revealed, a further addendum is to be mentioned: Tidmore does not deny his roots on this album, and, as such, the timeless fascination towards the intimacy of the acoustic guitar is omnipresent. This decision tends to instill just the right amount of country-melancholy into the entries, but, as stated already, the agenda never is to depress, but, to invite to reflect and introspect. A quite decent LP overall, one which contains a whole set of evolutionary paths worthy to investigate even further.
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