Daddy’s Weird by congo64 -- 4.5 out of 5
Alan B. Freelance Music Writer
This is a unique post-punk rock album with grunge rhythm guitar, killer solos and an impressive male and female vocal range. It harkens to the late 70's and 80's but somehow feels reinvented.
The baritone lead provides an unusually dark patina over an angelic female backing vocal and a few uplifting themes. Still, the vocal tone is not so stylistic as to be incomprehensible. In fact, it seems to pull one into the words and was very easy to listen to repeatedly.
The album draws you in with the song, I Can’t Feel Your Feelings, a fresh take on a common relationship challenge and a clever deployment of a compare-and-contrast songwriting trope that includes excellent word crafting and an explosive hook.
It's followed by Tree of Life, based on an esoteric Qabalistic and biblical theme. The guitar slithers like a serpent, dropping instrumentation to minimal for the verse without losing energy and exploding into a chorus of light and dark vocals that include Hebrew blessings and a haunting ending.
Returning to a relationship theme, Give Me What I Need is imbued with intense sexual longing and desire, deploying a heavy rock, almost bluesy style with Chapin-esque phrasing. It had a wonderfully creative harmony/dissonance in the female backing vocal creating a discernible object-subject tension to the lead, both long for the same, unattainable love.
One song with a familiar, uplifting theme was Power of Now (practically an anthem for the same-named book by Eckhart Tolle) which had a nice clean production, again with vocals that are understandable, not over compressed with great balance, simple effective harmonies, killer guitar solos and a dynamic range demonstrating more good selections of where not to play.
The highly spiritual, inherently biblical song, Create Your Own Reality, deployed a cool vocal processing which fits the title and showed another creative combination of unity and harmony with the background singers and a second male backup.
The final song, Where in the World had a kind of cool James Bond feel. A “talkie” with no pitch issues, it includes fun vocal echoes contrasted against the drive of a distorted guitar and Lenard Cohen type lead vocal. The third verse drops to a minimalist backing, pulling the listener back in close after an enjoyable digression by the bridge. There's nicely filled orchestration while remaining open and not overdone. Intentional feedback at the end provides a clever, almost whimsical, wrap up.
Summing up: Creative, intelligent, unique, stands up to replays -- If you like rock with a harder edge buy it or stream it now. It's an out-of-nowhere classic.