Noble Beast

Unconventional singer-songwriter’s fourth album, featuring plenty of catchy melodies, beautiful singing, great pop-hooks, and all around quality songwriting. There’s a lot of really nicely detailed production, with layered instrumentation, including a fair amount of violin (apparently he’s classically-trained) and some virtuoso whistling. Parts of the album remind me of a more folky/baroque version of the shins, maybe a little of sufjan stevens or even a folky radiohead, but all-in-all a unique sound. No FCCs detected

***1) Great melodies throughout, nice whistling, nice strings, hand claps
**2) After a 1 min low-key intro, breaks-out into nice flamenco-style rhythm with nice violin…great hooks throughout.
3) More upbeat, sounding a little like m ward
**4) After 1 min violin intro, Calexico style rhythm kicks in, more of a stripped down sound, rustic fiddles
5) Lyric-centric, with shuffling rhythm, cool picked string sounds
6) Starts slow, builds throughout, kind of sounds like a baroque shins
7) 20 sec interlude of ambient sounds
8) Lots of looped beats, ambient synths..sounds like radiohead
9) Instrumental interlude
10) Staccato finger-picking, nice repeating phrasing, opens up into more of a rock tune at 3 min mark.
**11) Nice melody via finger-picked acoustic guitar, lowkey, stripped down sound
12) Starts quiet with acoustic guitars, builds to more orchestral sound
13) 7 min track, mellow for the most part. song switches gears at about 4 min mark
14) Reprise of Track 1 in a Stripped down classical style