Tony Piscotti’s debut suffers from a crushing inevitability: a collection of competent and occasionally inspired ballads and soft rockers that circle the genres of folk and country without ever capturing the inherent humanity of either. The first problem is Tony’s voice: a distinctly unemotional tool that’s fine at carrying a tune and delivering a turn of phrase with clipped efficiency but is lacking any real passion or soul.
Take ‘Middle of July’ for instance, a bitter-sweet ballad concerning the after-effects of a break-up. When Tony sings, ‘How long will it take / before you will break in two / just like I did over you / I must be hopeless’, you just don’t believe him. On ‘Letter to Matthew’, a song that carries a darker melody line and atmosphere, Tony’s voice fails to capture the mood that he’s trying to generate with the music. The lyrics demand some kind of broodiness or introspection, ‘all the ink had bled together / from the crying / and the coffee stains and cigarette smoke’, but Tony sings it with the same measured tone that he employs across virtually all the tracks.
It’s not all his fault. He’s poorly served by his producer who manages to infuse the album with an air of complete ordinariness. On certain tracks (e.g. ‘Genius’ and ‘Radiator Song’) Tony’s key changes and chord progressions should have been instilled with greater drama. Overall a ‘live’ organic feel would have revealed so much more in the songs. Oh, and ditching the passé drum sound wouldn’t hurt either.
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Tony’s been around the block for a few years and has done his time in bands and duos since the early ‘90s, but he’s always been the side-man. That position haunts his album: a man given the opportunity to take centre-stage but at the point of reckoning lacking the fundamental accoutrement to grasp it; a voice. Only on the final track ‘Carousel’ is there a chink in the emotional armour; whether the song resonates with deeper personal significance or because it’s the one track that Tony sings without any other musicians, who knows. Either way it suggests a singer currently lacking the self-confidence to carry a whole album.
Tony appears to be a hard-working, honest musician who’s paid his dues and these important qualities are displayed in his music. But it’s not enough to cut the mustard, particularly in the crowded world of Americana.
Ultimately you feel that he and his songs would be better served if someone else sang them and a more enlightened producer recorded them.
www.tonypiscotti.com
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