| CD REVIEW J Tillman |
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Band : J Tillman Besides being the drumming member of the somewhat successful Seattle (WA) based five-piece act Fleet Foxes (which he joined in Spring 2008), J Tillman (full Christian name Joshua) is also a prolific songwriter. Based in Seattle, Washington, the man’s been releasing a steady stream of solo albums since early 2005, and not counting the self-released Documented, Year In The Kingdom is his 6th full-length release to date (there’s also a combination EP/DVD entitled Isle Land, issued in 2008). However Tillman’s music is slightly (say a lot!) more introvert than Fleet Foxes’ self-aclaimed “baroque harmonic pop jams”…and rather categorizeable as calm Folk, with Tillman softly fondling either acoustic guitar or banjo, or introducing sparce additional sounds coming from hammered dulcimer, cymbals, air organs, or strings (done by one Jenna Conrad). According to the bio we got along with out (download) promo copy of the album, Year In The Kingdom would be Tillman’s most liberated work, by far his most joyful one. Ehr…if that’s so, I wonder, or perhaps don’t even wanna know, what his music sounds like when he’s down. I mean, this album is kinda depressing enough, or at least has a negative calming effect on me personally (the only track I personally found uplifting, is the weirdly titled “There Is No Good In Me”, which also happens to be the most elaborate, musically speaking, of the 9 songs on this album…the rest marked by a sorts of minimalism)! Then again, there’s people who wallow in this kind of music, even needs it to get through their days, so…to those, and in case they don’t know Tillman’s works yet, check out the elaborate amount of material posted at myspace.com/jtillman! In spite of my slightly negative appraisal of that one side of J Tillman’ss music, I have to admit that the music he makes is quite nice in its own right…which is also what earns him the rating I give this album! 80/100 Tony. |