Vinyl Williams- Talks In Her Sleep (self-released): The Listen

I was not right and this was not good.

It's not art rock or freak folk or anything else that I would've guessed, as evidenced by the fact that I guessed those things and I just said they were wrong. No, this is largely generic post-grunge hard rock, complete with the self-pitying lyrics and whiny vocals that the likes of Seven Mary Three and Our Lady Peace substituted for actual expressions of pain and introspection in grunge bands. Except it postdates all those acts, the trend, and anyone caring about that sound by a solid decade, doing exactly nothing for the perception that places like Utah are so behind the times that the times are getting routed through Antarctica by surface mail on their way there. There's about 30 total seconds of music that sound like 2007 instead of 1997: Nation ends with 20 seconds built around a drum machine, actual drums, and weird synth sounds--easily the most interesting part of the EP--and Oh, Dark Master has a brief intro with some kind of drum machine or sequencer. But then it sounds like all the rest of it.

I will say it's impressive that Williams was able to build all of this himself from the ground up. It sure as hell sounds like a full band, and that's not nothing. And I must say that Glass Houses has some neat arrangement details in the intro and its transition to the main body of the song. But on the whole it's just not memorable.

Well, somebody disagrees with me: Discogs shows a steady output including a record this year, so clearly enough people dig his work for him to keep going. Maybe he got better; Talks In Her Sleep isn't listed--again, I really ought to start submitting this stuff--and it predates everything that is. It's not surprising then that his web presence remains steady, both lionelwilliams.com and vinylwilliams.com are active. And there's a Bandcamp page and probably a whole lot of other stuff. I can only guess that I searched for both artist and the EP title in YouTube and that's why nothing came up whenever I found this disc.

Interestingly he's listed as neo-psychedelic in several places. I assure you, this EP is all flannel, no paisley. Maybe he was really young when he recorded it and changed his whole sound afterwards? Also, turns out he's John Williams's grandson so he's probably not actually from Utah and recorded at a pair of studios that aren't even in the one decent-sized city in the state for. . .reasons.