Bud Melvin
Bud Melvin's name conjures images of an overweight elderly man who wears bolo ties and drives an older model Buick. Bud Melvin is actually a Chicago / Alberquerque singer-songwriter and artist named John Poston.
Male singer-songwriters seem to be a dangerous sort: one can almost never know what they are going to encounter. The spectrum of such artists can range from justified reverence (Dylan, Bragg, Young, Drake, Smith, Waits) to legacy founding modern darlings (David Pajo aka Papa M, Johnston, Jeff Tweedy), once prostigeous icons until mid-80s / early 90s f-ups (springsteen) to ill-intented insincere opportunists (Bright Eyes) to that guy playing acoustic Nirvana who we saw at the bar last night. It's easily decipherable: on end of the spectrum furthers a craft, the other is working for dollars, pitchfork write-ups, and anonymous sex.
The main problem with singer-songwriters who are great and deserve praise and recognition are most foremost, the imitators. How many transparent songs must we be subjected to? How many 'next Bob Dylans or next Nick Drakes' will be marketed to us and our fellow citizens? Are by association, the next generational answers to the living classics going to corrode those who they ripped off by diluting the pool with people who already sing a little bit like Dylan or a lot like Leonard Cohen?
A solution to enjoying singer-songwriters has baffled me. Fresh air in the genre is as tough to come by just as it is in country (real country), which is suffering a similar plight.
Bud Melvin offers something different. He's not out to promote himself. He is selling his music, but he's not going to seek you out on myspace and advertise himself in your comments section. His site, constructed of rudimentary html, offers no link to an online Spin interview. A brief browse through his site reveals a healthy distaste for things capitalistic.
His music is emulating the standards of finely woven pop we're programmed to enjoy but the indiosyncracies keep us about an arm's length away, not to keep you away so much as to give you the opportunity to get closer if you want to. The instrumentation is comprised of layers of banjo, acoustic guitar, and most interestingly, a hacked gameboy. Other traditional and non-traditional elements surface including lap / pedal steel guitars and what sounds a lot like beatboxing. It is interesting to hear how close this motley assortment of instruments and their unusual juxtaposition within his songs risks bringing him close to novelty, but keeps him in a place of shear sincerity. His vocal stylings shift from one song to the next: in "Goodbye Pirahana", his doubled vocals sound reminscient of how I imagined a friendly monster might sound when I was a child. In "Hi Goldfish", his voice is quiet and shy. Though in "Moonglow" he crowns so Vaudeville-ingly-esque, before a steel guitar riff seals the MP3 file Bud has posted.
His music is certainly a strange animal. Though, it's a sincere, well-developed animal, and you can cook while listening to it. Its such a shame stuff like this doesn't surface more often.
Mp3s
Goodbye, Piranha
Hi, Goldfish
Moonglow (first 1/2)
Male singer-songwriters seem to be a dangerous sort: one can almost never know what they are going to encounter. The spectrum of such artists can range from justified reverence (Dylan, Bragg, Young, Drake, Smith, Waits) to legacy founding modern darlings (David Pajo aka Papa M, Johnston, Jeff Tweedy), once prostigeous icons until mid-80s / early 90s f-ups (springsteen) to ill-intented insincere opportunists (Bright Eyes) to that guy playing acoustic Nirvana who we saw at the bar last night. It's easily decipherable: on end of the spectrum furthers a craft, the other is working for dollars, pitchfork write-ups, and anonymous sex.
The main problem with singer-songwriters who are great and deserve praise and recognition are most foremost, the imitators. How many transparent songs must we be subjected to? How many 'next Bob Dylans or next Nick Drakes' will be marketed to us and our fellow citizens? Are by association, the next generational answers to the living classics going to corrode those who they ripped off by diluting the pool with people who already sing a little bit like Dylan or a lot like Leonard Cohen?
A solution to enjoying singer-songwriters has baffled me. Fresh air in the genre is as tough to come by just as it is in country (real country), which is suffering a similar plight.
Bud Melvin offers something different. He's not out to promote himself. He is selling his music, but he's not going to seek you out on myspace and advertise himself in your comments section. His site, constructed of rudimentary html, offers no link to an online Spin interview. A brief browse through his site reveals a healthy distaste for things capitalistic.
His music is emulating the standards of finely woven pop we're programmed to enjoy but the indiosyncracies keep us about an arm's length away, not to keep you away so much as to give you the opportunity to get closer if you want to. The instrumentation is comprised of layers of banjo, acoustic guitar, and most interestingly, a hacked gameboy. Other traditional and non-traditional elements surface including lap / pedal steel guitars and what sounds a lot like beatboxing. It is interesting to hear how close this motley assortment of instruments and their unusual juxtaposition within his songs risks bringing him close to novelty, but keeps him in a place of shear sincerity. His vocal stylings shift from one song to the next: in "Goodbye Pirahana", his doubled vocals sound reminscient of how I imagined a friendly monster might sound when I was a child. In "Hi Goldfish", his voice is quiet and shy. Though in "Moonglow" he crowns so Vaudeville-ingly-esque, before a steel guitar riff seals the MP3 file Bud has posted.
His music is certainly a strange animal. Though, it's a sincere, well-developed animal, and you can cook while listening to it. Its such a shame stuff like this doesn't surface more often.
Mp3s
Goodbye, Piranha
Hi, Goldfish
Moonglow (first 1/2)
posted by Rustle @ 7:43 AM
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