<\/p>\n
Forgetful Alien and Paul Madden solo are almost the same thing. On Long Since Gone <\/i>he does collaborate with drummer Rich Smith, although he would officially recognize this collaboration on his later effort Our Soul Hungers <\/i>by releasing it under the \u201cForgetful Alien\u201d band name and not as a solo effort. Smith\u2019s role also in Madden\u2019s music did evolve to handling duties other than just playing the drums. Long Since <\/i>Gone, though, is all Madden with Smith simply managing the drum-kit.<\/p>\n
Justifiably so, Long Since Gone<\/i> does sound like more of a solo effort. It has the warmth of a singer-songwriter record: the melody-dowsed guitars played softly, drumming that\u2019s only aesthetic and is not a bit overpowering, and the simple songs that invoke a mild sense of longing at best, and are easily palatable without being too emotionally stirring. Madden\u2019s vocals too have an air of vulnerable breathiness. <\/p>\n
This is an album that can be described as John Mayer meets Thom Yorke. The album\u2019s Yorke connection stops right at Madden\u2019s slightly unsettling shivery and alienated vocals; they don\u2019t go far out enough to even come close to Yorke\u2019s eccentric personality. And Mayer, on the other extreme, is way too buttoned-down and sane for Madden. So as a shy, unassuming, and certainly unconventional but not totally weird indie-rock album, Long Since Gone <\/i>has a lot of attributes \u2013 more aptly \u2013 to share with the works of the Jeff Dimpsey\/ Jeff Garber duo, National Skyline. <\/p>\n
While Our Soul Hungers<\/i> would yield a matured and a much more complex indie-prog sound, Long Since Gone<\/i> is a simple guitar-based rock album. But its guitar-laden dulcetness creates just enough room for splurges into classic Pink Floyd prog-rock dreamscapes <\/a>in subtle doses throughout the record, but more unmistakably on \u201cOnce There,\u201d \u201cWorld Come Undone,\u201d and \u201cIf You Could Be Here Now.\u201d The instrumental \u201cHippie Chick\u201d is an occasion where the Madden and Smith throw a pleasant surprise with the song\u2019s distinctly Tool (in its laidback psychedelic moments) guitar and percussive arrangement.<\/p>\n Madden sounds fragile on this record. But he doesn\u2019t bear his heart and soul to the listener. He is a musician first and foremost and not a poet; Madden himself is not as important on this record as his music. For a man whose voice often plays like another music instrument, Madden knows that for his solo record, a singer-songwriter is not what he should sound like.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":30639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8697],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-42310","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-paul-madden","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42310"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}