Spring Break
REVIEW: 'Wonderland' just misses the mark
2 out of 5 stars
Travis Moore
Issue date: 2/12/09 Section: Focus
There are certain underground artists we stumble upon every so often - artists who fight tooth and nail to carve a corner to call their own in the ruthless music business and astound us by virtue of their lyrical wit, soulful sensibility and blazing talent.
Every so often, there are true diamonds in the rough who bravely cast off the tawdriness of image to share their gifts with the world.
The rest of the time, there is David W. Jacobsen, whose repertoire, by the sound of things, is comparatively scarce. In the New Jersey singer-songwriter's latest album, "Walking Away from Wonderland," Jacobsen mounts a roughly hewn and forgettable excursion into the adult world of regrets, goodbyes and uninspired hooks.
Things kick off with the sprightly "Easier Said than Done," an up-tempo, acoustic bop that shows promise with a decent lead. It's when Jacobsen begins singing that the album's penchant for irksome, repetitious melodies and needlessly longwinded lyrical stylings becomes clear: "You remember / You can't forget / every moment / They keep you down like debt / Unpayable debt."
Then he does that for 15 more tracks.
There are some occasionally ambitious arrangements to be found on "Wonderland," but not many effective ones. Most of the tracks feature over-embellished instrumentation that exists for complexity's sake and rarely is a phrase resolved pleasurably. Unanchored melodies drift aimlessly and without regard for the pieces they accompany.
It's just a frustrating chore to piece artistic direction together with songs this muddled, especially when they never progress and sound like they've been mixed on some guy's iMac. To paraphrase Woody Guthrie, any damn fool can make something complicated, but it shouldn't take a genius to avoid the garage band drum loops.
That's not to say that some more help from Apple would've been unwarranted. For a Berklee School of Music graduate, Jacobsen's musicianship, even in a genre so forgiving of technical foibles, is often notably amateurish. Indeed, even the reasonably inventive "…By Sunday" and "Might Have Been" are crippled by either sloppy playing or Jacobsen's woefully untrained voice, which tends to dip off-key and into a convulsive vibrato maddeningly often.
Some of it is all right, even in the neighborhood of catchy. The chorus for "Sandcastles" is legitimately well constructed, if a bit bloated. The track's killer, and much of the album's, is the wishy-washy sentiment Jacobsen warbles throughout.
Jacobsen clearly wants his lyrics to be relatable on an impressionist, insert-your-name-here level, and that's fine, but he seems at all times more concerned with implying his prodigious receptiveness to the human condition than actually demonstrating it. It's like being promised a puppy and being given a pretty box instead.
Jacobsen has written an album of perpetual rain checks, each promising some hidden sagacity beneath its nebulous surface and never delivering anything truly profound.
Flaccid and unrewarding, "Wonderland" ambles where it ought to gain ground and flickers where it ought to illuminate. Call me na've, but I had no idea getting older would be such a drag.
Every so often, there are true diamonds in the rough who bravely cast off the tawdriness of image to share their gifts with the world.
The rest of the time, there is David W. Jacobsen, whose repertoire, by the sound of things, is comparatively scarce. In the New Jersey singer-songwriter's latest album, "Walking Away from Wonderland," Jacobsen mounts a roughly hewn and forgettable excursion into the adult world of regrets, goodbyes and uninspired hooks.
Things kick off with the sprightly "Easier Said than Done," an up-tempo, acoustic bop that shows promise with a decent lead. It's when Jacobsen begins singing that the album's penchant for irksome, repetitious melodies and needlessly longwinded lyrical stylings becomes clear: "You remember / You can't forget / every moment / They keep you down like debt / Unpayable debt."
Then he does that for 15 more tracks.
There are some occasionally ambitious arrangements to be found on "Wonderland," but not many effective ones. Most of the tracks feature over-embellished instrumentation that exists for complexity's sake and rarely is a phrase resolved pleasurably. Unanchored melodies drift aimlessly and without regard for the pieces they accompany.
It's just a frustrating chore to piece artistic direction together with songs this muddled, especially when they never progress and sound like they've been mixed on some guy's iMac. To paraphrase Woody Guthrie, any damn fool can make something complicated, but it shouldn't take a genius to avoid the garage band drum loops.
That's not to say that some more help from Apple would've been unwarranted. For a Berklee School of Music graduate, Jacobsen's musicianship, even in a genre so forgiving of technical foibles, is often notably amateurish. Indeed, even the reasonably inventive "…By Sunday" and "Might Have Been" are crippled by either sloppy playing or Jacobsen's woefully untrained voice, which tends to dip off-key and into a convulsive vibrato maddeningly often.
Some of it is all right, even in the neighborhood of catchy. The chorus for "Sandcastles" is legitimately well constructed, if a bit bloated. The track's killer, and much of the album's, is the wishy-washy sentiment Jacobsen warbles throughout.
Jacobsen clearly wants his lyrics to be relatable on an impressionist, insert-your-name-here level, and that's fine, but he seems at all times more concerned with implying his prodigious receptiveness to the human condition than actually demonstrating it. It's like being promised a puppy and being given a pretty box instead.
Jacobsen has written an album of perpetual rain checks, each promising some hidden sagacity beneath its nebulous surface and never delivering anything truly profound.
Flaccid and unrewarding, "Wonderland" ambles where it ought to gain ground and flickers where it ought to illuminate. Call me na've, but I had no idea getting older would be such a drag.
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