{"id":14760,"date":"2018-06-28T05:30:47","date_gmt":"2018-06-28T09:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=14760"},"modified":"2018-06-28T09:38:55","modified_gmt":"2018-06-28T13:38:55","slug":"album-review-gretchens-wheel-black-box-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/06\/28\/album-review-gretchens-wheel-black-box-theory\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Gretchen&#8217;s Wheel &#8212; Black Box Theory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-14761\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/gretchens_wheel_bbt.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/gretchens_wheel_bbt.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/gretchens_wheel_bbt-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/gretchens_wheel_bbt-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>I\u2019ve reviewed releases from Gretchen\u2019s Wheel before. Gretchen\u2019s Wheel is the professional name used by Lindsay Murray for her musical project. Largely a solo affair, Gretchen\u2019s Wheel is Murray\u2019s vehicle for her chiming, exquisitely melodic songwriting and wonderfully tuneful vocals. I\u2019ve had no trouble categorizing previous Gretchen\u2019s Wheel releases as power pop, and I use the term in its most positive sense. Murray&#8217;s most recent effort prior to now was a cover of Matthew Sweet\u2019s \u201cWalk Out,\u201d a highlight of the various-artists tribute <i>Altered Sweet<\/i>. That recording served to reinforce the idea that Gretchen\u2019s Wheel is indeed a power pop act.<\/p>\n<p>But the existence of <i>Black Box Theory<\/i>, the latest full-length from Murray, places that assertion on shakier ground. Not to say that the tunes aren\u2019t highly appealing; they really are. It\u2019s just that there\u2019s a melancholy vibe that permeates the entire disc, a collection of ten primarily minor-key songs. Longing, regret and doubt are among the emotional textures explored within the grooves of <i>Black Box Theory<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Lindsay Murray\u2019s vocals are perhaps even more sharply developed than before; the creamy <i>ahhh<\/i> backing vocals are liberally\u2014and pleasingly\u2014applied throughout. The jangly electric guitar finger picking seems ever-so-slightly dialed back compared to previous efforts, but it\u2019s still there, albeit a bit deeper in the mix and harder to find. \u201cLucid\u201d teases with a tantalizingly brief 12-string solo, for example.<\/p>\n<p>The album as a whole is an impressively realized effort, easily ranking among the best Murray has released to date. And it\u2019s worth noting that melancholy isn\u2019t a previously unexplored emotion for Gretchen\u2019s Wheel. It\u2019s just that in some ways, <i>Black Box Theory<\/i> is as dark as its cover art: specks of light shimmer through the inky black.<\/p>\n<p>Power pop listeners should most definitely not be put off by signals suggesting <em>Black Box Theory<\/em> is downbeat; it\u2019s not that at all. Instead it\u2019s perhaps best described as deeply thoughtful, tempering the genre\u2019s sometime predilection for sunny optimism with something a great deal more realistic and grounded. That Murray takes this approach and applies her many melodic gifts to the process is commendable. The hooks are still there to draw listeners in.<\/p>\n<p>Murray earns extra points for releasing the album in a lavish gatefold sleeve, and with eye-popping splatter vinyl.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve reviewed releases from Gretchen\u2019s Wheel before. Gretchen\u2019s Wheel is the professional name used by Lindsay Murray for her musical project. Largely a solo affair, Gretchen\u2019s Wheel is Murray\u2019s vehicle [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14761,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,62,65],"tags":[947],"class_list":["post-14760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-review","tag-gretchens-wheel","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14760"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14766,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14760\/revisions\/14766"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}