Elliott Rubin - Love & Daggers
Monday, January 14, 2008
Elliott Rubin's debut solo album Love & Daggers is an hour long journey of truth speaking poetry over rock music. After several listens this album started to grow on me more and more, after many more listens I feel like I've known Elliott for years. Elliott plays most of the guitar and bass on this album and had some help from friends to complete the line up.
The first track "Willy Mays" is again what I look for in an opening song, it introduces the rest of the album overall with some hype. The next song is my personal favorite, "My Ticket Out". I first heard this song on the RedRoom 104's myspace before the album was released. I had no idea who Elliott Rubin was at that time or what he was up to, but I definitely was digging this track. The music is smooth, the vocals float over the top nicely making the song very moody. Following that the album gets into the more singer/songwriter side of E.R. "Dawsonville" starts off with some off kilter keys work, done by Greg Case, bringing an almost saloon feel to the track, which is a really nice touch. "MLK" comes across as a smooth acoustic jam then suddenly you are jerked into the chorus professing that "we'll change, we'll get the ball rolling", some good words to remember. The entire song is uplifting and preaches motivation. Another personal favorite is the track "Thursday", the music is smooth the whole way through while E.R. sings about the woes of making it to every next day. The final three songs are some of the most rocking on the album. "God Honest Truth" comes in blasting with the god honest truth and E.R. lets the vocals rip along with crunchy guitars and big drums. The same comes with "Gift" and "Spent" could be the most rhythmic song on the album, the drums and guitar are rocking hard while E.R., as in the opening track, goes from soft vocals to emotional screaming.
The production on this album is thick, it sounds like singer songwriter music was hooked up with a full band to fill it out and they did a good job. The mixing and mastering is solid, only a few times did some things remind me that this album did not come from a major label system, which is impressive in itself. The length of the album is a bit much for my attention span, I would cut a few of the filler songs and keep 10 or so of the most solid, saving the rest for a b-sides release. It takes an enormous amount of effort to piece together an album and for this to be Elliott Rubins debut, I am impressed. Being a musician I understand all that goes into creating a work of art like this and I give my kudos to all those that were involved.
- Bret Phillips
Labels: AlbumReviews
posted by Conqueror @ 5:00 AM,
1 Comments:
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At January 28, 2008 6:02 PM,
marty said...
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Totally mislabeled.
