Bass, Drums, Guitars & Organs, not just an appealing and straight to the point album title, but the doorway to a vibrant and beautiful gathering of songs from a clearly experienced and passionate songwriter and musician collective.
When She’s Walking By Your Side is the opener, a warm and indie-inspired country pop sort of song, with gorgeously relevant instrumentation that stops and starts with satisfying accuracy as the story and melody unfold. The song is brilliantly structured and every performance is wonderful – the leading vocal, the riffs, the drums, the cumulative energy – everything works as one. It makes for a complete and memorable piece of music and writing. A great introduction to the project.
I’ve Been On My Knees adds a little more of that country twang to the mix, though as the song progresses this one is more of a mellow, indie-doused exploration of modern life. The song is something of an anthem in fact, an easy going, calming anthem, with short and compelling lyrical lines. It almost instantly imprints its melody and it’s hook into the mind of the listener. A powerful bit of songwriting, something that’s in no short supply as the rest of the collection steps forward.
As you make your way through It All Falls Down On Me, the reflective purity of these songs stands taller and taller. The overall warmth of the sound has that personal, guy next door kind of sound in itself, but the lyrics consistently add to this effect and really help give off a genuine, believable, easy to relate to album of instant classics. There are possibly more momentous hooks in this project than in some of the best selling greatest hits collections of the past few years. Handful Of Rain is no exception, another gentle song with an emotionally loaded and beautifully calming chorus. Again, the structure of the song is hugely impressive – the music in its entirety is a finely tuned instrument of expression, following with absolute precision the story line and the mood of the moments as they pass by.
Rafferty Train is a real moment of peace and hopefulness. The light shuffling rhythm of the acoustic guitar combined with these snippets of the electric make for a beautiful accompaniment as the leading vocal melody guides the storytelling along. The imagery in the song makes for a gorgeous bit of escapism, and the music feeds into this superbly. Then things switch up a little as Baby Put A Dress On begins to play. There’s a vintage air of soft rock and roll about the track, a rising energy, a chorus that screams for you to sing along, and all in all a feeling of a live show being an absolute must at the earliest possibility. You can feel the good vibes radiating at this point, and it only gets brighter as Wound Up Woman pours out through the speakers.
The vintage rock and roll vibes are out in full force at this point, a bit of a Chuck Berry, nights out dancing at the diner kind of mood, really well placed within the collection and every bit as addictive and musically powerfully as any of the classics. Then you get a little moment of calm and content, a self-reflective, poetic outpouring of honesty in the form of the soft and acoustic Someone Else’s Dream. The personal openness of this song gives listeners a moment to really connect with the songwriter, and this, on top of the great energy and musicianship of the rest of the project, is likely to keep people locked in for good.
Rockin’ In The Moonlight is a romantic and lightly energetic piece of music and writing that seems like the perfect midpoint between the rock and roll and the folk side of the collection. The balance is well executed at this penultimate point in the project and the song comes across as genuinely fresh and memorable. Arrangement is important, and this album has it down it seems. Former Femme Fatales and Romeos is the finisher, an acoustic guitar ballad with a poignant bit of story telling and a notable melody, all of which works well together in crafting something truly unique and a real pleasure to listen to.
Download the album via iTunes. Find and follow Frank Migliorelli & The Dirt Nappers on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter. Visit their Website for more information.
