{"id":21114,"date":"2021-06-11T05:30:56","date_gmt":"2021-06-11T09:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=21114"},"modified":"2021-06-10T09:49:47","modified_gmt":"2021-06-10T13:49:47","slug":"album-review-johnathan-pushkar-compositions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/06\/11\/album-review-johnathan-pushkar-compositions\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Johnathan Pushkar \u2013 Compositions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"File Under: Too twee for me, but perhaps not for thee.<\/strong> This by-the-numbers powerpop album would seem to have all the requisite elements: catchy choruses, creamy vocal harmonies, and a sunny, upbeat disposition. But there\u2019s something just too saccharine about the whole thing. When The SpongeTones made Beatle-y music, it was inspired. When the That <\/i>T<\/i>hing You Do!<\/i> soundtrack did a modern-day pastiche of pop genres, its aim was true. But these songs are just a bit too cutesy, a bit too Archies for my tastes.<\/p>\n

\u201cGonna Be Alright\u201d feels almost like a parody of Gerry and the Pacemakers. Pushkar\u2019s vocal texture certainly pulls things in that direction, but the song has a character that suggests that if you looked up the word \u201cditty\u201d in an encyclopedia, it would be cited as an example. It\u2019s the musical equivalent of cotton candy: overly sweet, and lacking in substance.<\/p>\n

For those who can\u2019t get enough retro-pastiche Merseybeat, Compositions<\/i> might just delight you. But the record falls victim to most all of the charges leveled at powerpop. Put another way, even if you\u2019re not self-conscious, if you were caught listening to this, you might blush. I listened in private and it gave me a toothache.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing explicitly awful about this record, though the needless cover of Wings\u2019 \u201cJunior\u2019s Farm\u201d comes perilously close. There were clouds on the horizon even before I received this disc: when I reviewed the various-artists Lennon tribute CD<\/a> last year, I noted that Pushkar\u2019s contributions to the project \u201coffer[ed] precisely nothing in terms of new ideas or originality.\u201d The same is true with his Macca cover. Pushkar\u2019s ginchy vocals are woefully miscast in this rocker. I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s a karaoke recording of the song, but take the vocal track off this \u2013 not a bad idea, that \u2013 and you\u2019ve got one. A cover of “Bip Bop” would have made more sense from a stylistic perspective.<\/p>\n

I will, however, end my coverage of this regrettable affair with something positive. If you listen to any of the album\u2019s tracks (except the Macca cover) and find it to your liking, there are nine more almost identical to it for your pleasure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

File Under: Too twee for me, but perhaps not for thee. This by-the-numbers powerpop album would seem to have all the requisite elements: catchy choruses, creamy vocal harmonies, and a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21115,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,51,65],"tags":[4325],"class_list":["post-21114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-pop","category-review","tag-jonathan-pushkar","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21114","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=21114"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21117,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21114\/revisions\/21117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}