Bryan McPherson - "Fourteen Stories" (Indecent Music)
I saw this guy play at the Abbey Lounge on a Wednesday night. It was your standard acoustic show: people getting up there and hacking through poorly constructed songs with moments of potential but nothing much more than what you'd expect for a Wednesday night. Until this kid, Bryan McPherson, got up to play. His set was like nothing I've seen in ages. There were moments when I literally got a little misty eyed over the song topics and the honest energy being dumped into them. The only thing that kept popping into my head was the line from Bill Joel's Piano Man that says "man, what are you doing here?". It appeared that every person in the capacity crowd of 15 to 20 bought a CD that night. And while the CD doesn't capture everything you need to know about McPherson's music and the identity/personality that comes across so easily and honestly in the music, it will more than satisfy whatever itch you have now for some sort of new brilliance in town. The high points of the album are "Angel in the Snow" and "Don't Terrorize Me". One listen might classify this CD as being of the singer/songwriter genre but I wouldn't quite call that summary fair. It walks the line between something that everyone might like and something that fans of early Against Me or Two Gallants would die for. McPherson is in a really good position; the world is his oyster and all he really needs to do it play his cards right and he'll have whatever following he wants. And the best news about this record is that some of the highlights of his live set aren't even on this A+ disc so its clear he hasn't blown his musical wad in his first shot like so many bands do. (M. Lind)
Angels & Airwaves - "I Empire" (Suretone/Geffen)
This is the band that the punk rock kids love to hate. And its also the band that this 30 year old man loves. It picks up where the last album left off with songs that sound like some sort of slightly scaled down version of U2's arena rock mixed with lyrics that are too far over the heads of their target audience. It still baffles me that this guy came from Blink 182 and was able to release either this record or their debut. Lyrically he is writing from the point of view of someone in the 28 - 32 age bracket and it doesn't surprise me that the teenagers would find Delonge's lyrics to be pompous and foolish. But I think its more that they don't get it than that he's the fool they'd make him out to be. Sure.... maybe at times it gets a little too bombastic and too big for its britches but no guts, no glory and I think this guy is onto something a hell of a lot bigger than what people are foreseeing. On the local level, their new bass player is former Bostonian, Matt Wachter, who used to play guitar in Strangle Me and even did a few stints sitting in with me and my brother in Sinners & Saints. (M.Lind)
