Liam Titcomb – Cicada album review
Paul is a musician, writer, and teacher living in Tacoma. When not engaged in the endless task of raising his six year old whirling dervish James Sparhawk, he spends his time creating music, pursuing a bachelor's, working out, and living. He is originally from the east coast: Worcester, Mass. born, and Providence, RI bred. Having traveled around some, the Pacific Northwest tends to feel more and more like home with each passing day, Very similar to New England in some ways, but different in a way that is refreshing. Rock on.
Liam Titcomb is a talented young man, if a little on the light side in terms of his music making. For someone who is approximately 25 years old, his musical vision is fairly mature. This is one of those cases where I can appreciate the music created without really getting into it that much. It’s not that he’s a terrible songwriter, because he isn’t. He possesses a decent sense of musical form, and manages to make the most of his clean tone pop rock tunes.
The biggest problem, at least for me, is the fact that the songs, while penned by someone who obviously possesses an innate musical sense, are all fairly one dimensional from an aesthetic standpoint. They’re basically all mid-tempo rock tunes with very gentle tone colors and an incredibly subdued rhythm section. When I say subdued rhythm section, I don’t recall one single drum fill on the whole album, just a sense of very rudimentary time keeping. The desire to be treated as a ‘SINGER-SONGWRITER’ is so palpable as to be a little oppressive.
To get an idea of just how low key the proceedings are, check out ‘Shift’. The ‘breakdown’ in the middle of the tune is one of the most raucous moments on the whole album, and it really doesn’t begin to qualify as ‘earth shaking’. Just sort of lively. After that, the song cycles back on itself and ends, and this brings us to…. ‘Angeline’, which would fit very nicely on adult radio; I keep referencing Sting, but with less charisma. The song is so mellow that I would be concerned about playing this for someone operating a motor vehicle, in a manner similar to the warnings about operating heavy machinery on the backs of some medicine bottles.
The utter lack of any exuberance, forcefulness or intensity track after track starts to become distracting after a while. The whole thing is so utterly undynamic and middle of the road that there’s just no profile to it at all. At least he can sing in tune, and has a solid rhythmic sense. And that’s about all I have to say, because there isn’t much to work with.
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