{"id":14368,"date":"2018-04-04T05:00:07","date_gmt":"2018-04-04T09:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=14368"},"modified":"2018-04-03T11:16:43","modified_gmt":"2018-04-03T15:16:43","slug":"ep-review-paul-maged-the-glass-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/04\/04\/ep-review-paul-maged-the-glass-river\/","title":{"rendered":"EP Review: Paul Maged — The Glass River"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Alterna-rocker Paul Maged has been making albums for more than a decade now; his latest is a six-song EP called The Glass River<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The songs vary widely: opening track \u201cGunz 4 Hire\u201d is a near-manic rock tune, with shouted vocal choruses and wailing police sirens, all taken at a breakneck pace not unlike punk, but with more of a conventional rock sensibility.<\/p>\n

The playfully-titled \u201cCorporate Hell (The Legend of Tooly McDouche)\u201d has a stagey, theatrical feel not unlike Jim Steinman’s work for Meat Loaf, complete with decidedly NSFW lyrics. \u201cChoices\u201d slows things down for \u201cChoices,\u201d a ballad vaguely reminiscent of Dennis DeYoung-era Styx. The EP’s title track (subtitled \u201cThe Ballad of Alan and Jane\u201d) is the most musically appealing track on The Glass River<\/i>. All of Maged’s musical virtues are on display here, and he reins in some of the more self-indulgent tendencies that characterize the first three tracks.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the Sea\u201d is a pretty piano ballad, with somewhat mannered vocals. The song’s arrangement folds in additional instrumentation as it unfolds; the melody is strong enough on its own, but Maged’s lyrics make the song: set in the (near) future, \u201cFor the Sea\u201d describes environmental disaster, and features the sound of crashing waves and screeching seagulls to make its point even more overt.<\/p>\n

The Glass River<\/em> ends somewhat oddly, with a brief track called \u201cLife Goes By Prelude.\u201d It’s a promising enough tune, but it feels underdeveloped, as if it should be placed at the beginning of a larger work. Overall, The Glass River<\/i> has its moments, but feels a bit like the rush-released part of a full album. If that is the case, the tracks here will be worth re-assessment in that larger context.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alterna-rocker Paul Maged has been making albums for more than a decade now; his latest is a six-song EP called The Glass River. The songs vary widely: opening track \u201cGunz […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14369,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,62,65],"tags":[3390],"class_list":["post-14368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-review","tag-paul-maged","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14370,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14368\/revisions\/14370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}