Brendan Hoagan CD Release for Long Night Coming at Lizard Lounge on the 29th
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Cambridge Singer-songwriter, Brendan Hogan will be playing at the Lizard Lounge on the 29th to celebrate the release of his first full-length album Long Night Coming.The Lizard Lounge is a very appropriate place to have the release party for Hogan, since it is the same venue he started up in, playing open-mics and sitting in with other bands.
If you like Bob Dylan you'll love Long Night Coming The album is mostly soft and very pretty with light country and Celtic accents. Some songs like "Rock Cast in the Sea" and "Big Black Car" are larger and more swingin'. "Rock Cast into the Sea" is a fast, accordion-involved piece and really stands out on the album which shows Hogan's versatility. All the lyrics are balladic or poetic and finely composed. The title track "Long Time Coming" is a beautiful and metaphoric piece, with soft but soulful vocals. The first line of the song explains the album cover, Hogan causally posed in front of the Somerville Theater.
The thing I like about this album is the dynamic of the lyrics and music. The lyrics are incredibly dire at times, but it doesn't mater because the music that floats around the words is hopeful. (Think Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" or "Most of the Time")
Should be a great show and I bet you a million bucks there will be lots of special guests, local folks and lots of beer. A perfect show to see to top of the awesome month of January (honestly though, there have been some great shows this month.) Also a great album to get you through the epic awesomeness of February in New England.
Psychedelic swirling lures, introducing Forest People with atmospheric effects, slide guitar and nebulous, distant vocals. It builds softly before dropping dead into one crunchy, snarled-lip guitar lick. The band kicks it aside with the verse, Daniel Tortoledo's vocals immediately in the high-register, the rhythm guitar jiving like 70's funk. It's as hypnotizing an opener as this listener has encountered in a very long time. But The Highway, much as the name suggests, isn't content to idle in one place. "Frozen Sun" cruises away from a desert sunset and a troubled past; there's defeat in the lyrics, but it's accepted, calm, soothed by the breeze and the knowledge that tomorrow is a new day. The title track reminds what a spell a well thought out chord progression and back-up vocals can weave - it's a stunning, down-tempo meditation. "Song for the World" is utterly beautiful; if you're the type to let music touch you, this one will, and it's thanks to plumb ingenious song-writing: An entrancingly bittersweet opening gives way to one hell of a surprising French interlude (yes, both linguistically and musically); the song loops back on itself, gaining weight and fleshing out, and by the end, you might not know whether to laugh, cry, or sing along - even though they've switched languages again, this time to Spanish. Now, I know I'm a bit of a sap, but the raw emotionality of the record is worth noting because it's a field in which psychedelically-minded rock 'n roll rarely succeeds. But it's rock and roll, after all, so fear not if you just want to put your fist in the air - there's attitude in abundance, sharp and edgy soloing, inspired rhythm changes; hell, there's even a sing-along drum-and-vocal break. There's still some residue of the "rock is dead" prophesying, some grumbling that rock and roll is all, at this point, recycled goods, and that the new breed of rock is not really "rock" so much as indie, as experimental, as post-this or that-core. Buy Forest People. And then buy it for anyone you know who buys that sh*t.
- Cullen Corley
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