David Vesel - Calliope

Purple Is
The Coming Of The Dead
Rip It Out
Actions Speak Louder Than Words
Love Is An Answer, But Love Is Not The Answer
Crush
Stained Glass
Echoes
Sinking In The Sand
The Caves
Numb
The Coming Of The Dead (Nullification Mix)
The Caves (2001 Version)
?

This is the Fourth full-length album from David Vesel, preceeded by "Chivalry", "Integrity" and a instrumental album entitled "One Swell Foop: Instrumentalysis v2.0". All the previous albums have been released through www.ampcast.com, as was this album. While not a perfect recording, there are several intriguing elements to David Vesel's somewhat minimal synthpop music.

The album doesn't get off to a good start. In fact, the weakest track on the whole album starts the album off. "Purple Is"... a decent idea gone horribly wrong. It is a attempted synthpop rendering in a more EBM oriented setting, and it just doesn't work. Somewhat like some of the "harder" tracks that Cosmicity did before "The Vision" - not really suited to the artist. Thankfully, this is a direction that DV only tries once. There were only two other tracks I really didn't care for: "The Caves" and the unlisted fourteenth track. The 2001 mix of "The Caves" is much more enjoyable (I.e., stripped down) than the version on track ten, which takes the darkness of the track to an uncomfortable extreme. I'm also a little uncomfortable with the lyrical content of this song. The Unlisted track is a neat idea - a choir in the background singing U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" with a bunch of strange vocal samples overlapping the music and vocals. I would have preferred a more straight cover of the track without the extra noise, though.

OK, enough negativity. There are some really catchy, well-written pop tunes here. I particularly like the lyrical twists of "Rip It Out", "Love Is An Answer, But Love Is Not The Answer" and "Actions Speak Louder Than Words" use irony in a wonderfully bitter twist in each chorus. "Echoes" is a wonderfully slow, contemplative ballad that I find myself listening to again and again. "Crush", "The Coming Of The Dead" and "Stained Glass" are all excellent songs as well. "Crush" succeeds where "Purple Is" fails, in that while it is a very rhythmically based song, it still is a very catchy and fun song. "The Coming Of The Dead" is a song I don't totally understand, but still enjoy a lot. Especially the remix of the track at track 12, where the dance elements of the song are enhanced. "Stained Glass" is almost as wonderful a ballad as "Echoes", with some really pretty synth work anchoring the song.

All in all, this is a good album. It's not without flaws though. The overall vocals are a little thin, with some strain noticeable at times when the vocals get near the top of their range. And not all the songs really work all that well. But when they do, David Vesel puts togeather some really impressive synthpop. There are some really great songs here, and I'm left wondering what could be done with a little more production fine-tuning. I really think that DV shows a whole lot of promise - but needs a bit more fleshing out in producing the music.

Added:  Friday, February 28, 2003
Reviewer:  Jason Baker
Score:
Related web link:  Official Website
hits: 2082
Language: eng