Writers don’t get a lot of respect these days, at least not from the people bankrolling creative projects. But while this is a sad thing to witness, in some ways, it makes sense. How do you invest money in a person who only needs a pen and a dose of caffeine to do the work?
Everything else can be bought and cleaned up, and new features can be added to it. Movie productions rely heavily on big-name stars, on expensive props, or gadgets meant to make you believe that you’re staring out into the future. But if there’s no story to work all of these expensive toys around, what’s the fuss about?
Modern music labels find themselves adopting the same kind of strategy. Sure, pop stars are made to look pretty, helped to dance well and even given out funny anecdotes to tell when they’re on late-night television. You can employ competent musicians around them, hire pyro experts, and marry them into royalty. But if there’s no writer there to come up with the songs, all that you have is a really expensive circus show.
Brian Halloran is a man in love with the pen, paper, and chords played on an acoustic guitar. He’s in love with starting stories from scratch and with getting the just the right words to fight just the right progression. Halloran fashions himself as a classic songwriter, the kind of person that the suits bring in whenever the aforementioned circus has nothing but dance moves and gossip to run on.
There are no great writers who can get by on big ideas alone. You need a sense of humor and someone to edit down your work. Otherwise, you risk turning into Ayn Rand. Halloran has a bit of both as he contemplates betrayal and loneliness on the EP’s opener, “The Only Thing Keeping Me Down is Me.”
Halloran sings: “I catalog my mistakes, by kind and size and date/And on a loop they play til my heart forgets how not to break,” proving he’s not made of the harder stuff, which renders people emotionless and turns them into awful tea-party guests.
And if you’re one of the many listeners who find solace in a heartfelt, bubblegum-flavored 90s-styled indie-rock number, you may want to check out “Satellite.” If the Counting Crows or The Goo Goo Dolls don’t have the good sense to try and buy these songs off Halloran, it may be cause they’re plotting to burglarize the vaults and steal them.
Great choruses have changed the world, usually for the better. “For a Song” is Halloran’s attempt to reach for one, but also to squash the pain of romantic disappointment with good humor. It’s a well-crafted song and one that proves that Halloran knows how to rely on the strong, confident tone of his vocals, rather than merely on vocal range.
The album closer, “Spin My Wheels,” helps put Halloran in good company. The folk-rock sound and the production added to the song bring to mind great musical of the 90s, like Sheryl Crows, Counting Crows, Semisonic who sought to entertain, but also to pen the sort of songs strong enough to be covered centuries after the fact.
At the heart of it, this is pop music, filled with teenage longing, enthusiasm, and a heart that’s open enough that anything can crack it. But it’s finely tuned, carefully designed, and, most importantly, it isn’t assuming less of an audience willing to hang their dreams on these four-minute tunes.
Somebody has to put the great stories in writing, and, most of the time, that person also has to come up with most of the details. The movie shows don’t run without a writer coming up with a good enough tale, the great historical figures are forgotten without a good story, and the pop music world freezes up without good songs. That’s when you need people like Brian Halloran.
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