Powerful Album of 60s-Tinged Singer-Songwriter Melancholy
Hyperbolium
Posted On September 9, 2016
Austin singer-songwriter Michael Fracasso has certainly earned his Americana stripes, but his latest release connects to a time when singer-songwriters were emerging from multiple musical vantage points. His albums have threaded together, folk, pop, rock, blues and country, and his songwriting craft has shown the years spent sharing New York City stages with Steve Forbert and others. His new album mixes original material with cover songs, and though the latter include interesting choices and performances (highlighted by a droning psychedelic ending to the Young Rascals’ “How Can I Be Sure” and a crawling take of Willie Cobbs’ “You Don’t Love Me” that surely holds live audiences in thrall), it’s the original material that shines most brightly.
Fracasso conjures the sing-song melancholy of Harry Nilsson on “Say,” “Open” and “Daisy,” and transforms an unexpected reaction into the title track’s moody meditation. Wounds are pondered, forgiven, healed, and in the case of the “Boy in a Bubble,” broken hearts are glimpsed as an escape from emotional numbness. The latter’s orchestration evokes Curt Boettcher, Burt Bacharach and the Left Banke, and on “Little Scar,” you can hear the influence of Emitt Rhodes. Fracasso’s tenor is arresting, with slight hitches here and there, in case the purity of his tone doesn’t get you first. The album closes with the Kinks’ bittersweet “Better Things,” bookending Fracasso’s album-opening look forward at divorce, and edging the album painfully towards redemption. [©2016 Hyperbolium]
