OFFICIAL: http://www.juliamcdonaldmusic.com/
Written
by Joshua Stryde, posted by blog admin
Julia
McDonald’s debut Gravity is a first release you’ll remember for quite some
time. It’s a six song collection carrying every bit as much lyrical and musical
weight as most full length albums but features a collection of tracks with a
well honed focus that never veers off track. McDonald is nineteen years old,
but she already sounds like a seasoned artist capable of conveying any song to
listeners and tailors her voice quite nicely to the musical accompaniment
around her. Six songs, furthermore, seems like an ideal length for this release
and affords McDonald ample opportunity to show off her talent for taking on a
variety of styles and tempos. There’s also a strong singer/songwriter presence
on this release thanks to the frequent presence of acoustic guitar but the
drumming gives it a modern feel and avoids much straight-ahead, predictable
percussion. It’s a lot of little touches that takes these great songs and make
them into something even more.
The
relaxed and confident movement of the EP’s title track starts Gravity off in
fine form. The lyrical excellence of the song gets an added shine applied
thanks to McDonald’s evocative singing. Her skills with phrasing and bringing
an emotive quality to each line are amazing for such a young and quantifiably “inexperienced”
singer. McDonald, at only nineteen years old, sings these songs full of thorny
emotions and subject matter with the assurance and insight of someone much
older. Regardless if her interpretations and the songs themselves are culled
from personal experiences or purely imaginative acts inspired from another
source, McDonald approaches the EP’s songs as if her life depended on nailing
them and the title cut is one of the best examples. “Games” has traditional instrumentation
providing much of its musical shape, but there is a stronger pop edge powering
this track than we heard on the opener. The shifting rhythms she explores are quite
modern and seem to reflect a little hip hop influence on a release that, most
assuredly, doesn’t belong in that genre. The percussion does, however, give
these songs a quirky twist that they might otherwise lack with a simpler
treatment.
“No
Good for Me” is cynical, vulnerable, and often nakedly cruel. It is, however, a
brutally honest song that McDonald conveys to her listeners without any overt
displays of sentimentality. It’s much more in the singer/songwriter area than “Games”,
but there’s commercial appeal built into all of those songs to one degree or
another. The EP’s final track “Simpler Things” has a strong synthesizer
presence than many of the earlier track and a much more threatening posture.
McDonald is obviously a performer focused on writing and recording serious
minded songs rather than pursuing empty stardom alone, but she frames all of
her efforts with a five star pop song sound that gets the music over in the
best possible way.
No comments:
Post a Comment