Ryan Doyle
Campaign To Kill The Sparrows (Cassette Tape)
 From the title of Ryan Doyle's cassette only release on Monotone Records, I wonder if he's somehow in cahoots about the "situation" occurring at my own residence. Except in my case, it's a campaign to kill the crickets, which have invaded the crawl space underneath my house and insist on serenading me with their chirping day and night. I previously had similar problems with birds tweeting incessantly in the early morning hours, but that was before I chopped down the big tree in front of my house...
But, I digress. The first 8 songs on Campaign To Kill The Sparrows are like tiny mystical thought fragments encased in tape hiss and an abstract tapestry of spoken and sung phrases. I only had a walkman to play this stuff with. So through headphones, the variety of vocal pannings was almost disorienting. Sometimes it felt like 10 Lou Barlows all talking at once! Luckily, (and almost as if he was testing out his listeners' mettle?) by the 9th item, "I'd Share My Deathy", he decides to start fleshing things out the form of full songs. And when Doyle slurs almost drunkenly on the pretty "Rookie Valentine #2", it only serves to heighten the honesty and heartfelt nature of the material on this tape. I really liked this song in particular.
The second side continues the more formulated song trend, with "Chandeliers" and "Peppermint Starlights" proving to be nice and compact folk/pop ditties. For those who need concrete comparisons, i could throw out a couple names: Palace Brothers, maybe a little Half Japanese, and definitely Sentridoh. Unfortunately, halfway through the song "Motorcycle Girl", my ramshackle tape player decided to start eating the tape, so i can only guess whether in the last two songs he revisited the yammering folk from the first side. As a whole, the tape is kind of hit and miss, though that's not exactly a bad thing. I don't think Doyle will ever be accused of being boring, and that's more I could say for many, many other indie artists.
- review by BY (5.4.03)
Monotone Records
409 Martin Court
Leonardo, NJ 07737
monotonerecs@hotmail.com
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