Review Summary: Terrible.
Mellifluous Melodies is, regrettably, the complete opposite of mellifluous. It isn’t smooth, it doesn’t flow well, and it certainly doesn’t sound sweet to the ears. The album is a collection of harsh, grating music that sounds like the perfect soundtrack for an early morning game of Runescape. The most irritating synthesizers are at work here, the loud, obnoxious, and pointlessly cheesy kind. If you can’t picture this, imagine any of Beethoven’s greatest works, but instead of them being played normally, imagine someone butchering them by playing them in only staccato – it just doesn’t work.
Derek Lerch put no effort into making the music easy on the ears. What we have here are disjointed melodies, looking for a place to run to, that end up floundering around the map, lost and confused. Melodies seem beyond him, actually, as synthesizers jump around aimlessly looking for a place to land, but just can’t. Sometimes it even seems like he is intentionally making them clash, because he has no idea how to land a simple melody. It honestly sounds like, when recording the album, he just decided to go for broke and randomly hit notes with no direction, and with no keyboard experience. The only acceptably melodic, and sensible song on the album is the last song, 'Scoobed', but by then, the damage has already been done. If any thought was given to the album sounding mellifluous, it sure doesn’t sound like it. One decent song cannot make up for the entire rest of the album, which is devoid of good melodies, and therefore completely forgettable, and also difficult to listen to.
Ultimately,
Mellifluous Melodies is an amateurish effort from a newbie musician (if you can even call him a musician). Keyboard sounds have no variation at all, and are the most irritating types possible. For an album that is completely dependent on the keyboard, you’d think that the keyboard wouldn’t be played so awfully. It isn’t fun to listen to, and it isn’t even quirky in the fun way, so what’s the point? All musicians have to start somewhere, but that is no excuse for such a poor job.
