Review Summary: Not better than the sum of its parts.
Here’s the deal with experimental music: intelligent, transcendent, inspired. Boring, self-indulgent, cluttered. Rarely is there an in-between; it either works really well or it really doesn’t work at all.
Fortunately for Canadian alternative artist Robert Nix, ‘experimental’ is only one part of his act. Solid, straightforward songwriting retains its importance throughout
Once in a Blue Moon and is only dragged down by a few failed experiments midway through the record’s 30 minute runtime. Opener and first single “Won’t Go With the Flow” kicks off proceedings with a galloping drum roll before giving way to some haunting keys. The sound is one that has post-punk as its base, with the vocals and melodies often reminiscent of a warmer, less mechanical-sounding Joy Division. The title track continues the momentum with another memorable chorus before leading into the proggier “Watch Us Fall” which hints at influences from acts such as Jethro Tull and The Doors.
The acoustic “Time To Make Up Your Mind” is a fairly successful break from the opening stretch of songs which, while containing various progressive and experimental aspects, are all fairly similar in atmosphere and mood. However, while “Time To Make Up Your Mind” manages to move the album forward without sacrificing its overall tone, the same cannot be said of “Dad’s Song” and “Real Time Drum Solo”. While it’s not uncommon for alternative music albums to contain short interludes and experiments, it is rare to see two of them put side by side such as these, never mind the fact that their inclusion feels quite rushed and pointless. While 5 minutes may not seem like all that long in the grand scheme of things, it is their intrusive and momentum-killing nature that really irks.
The album’s 8th cut, “What Will You Do (Out of School)?” picks up pretty much exactly where the album left off before the random digression. It’s not one of
Once in a Blue Moon’s best numbers, though, and at this point it becomes apparent that the album is very frontloaded, with all the best songs at the beginning. However, while “Can’t Get To Sleep” is nothing more than a decent-enough closer, penultimate track “Stop the Cruelty (You Mindless Human)” does its best to save the album’s second half with some much-needed cynicism and anger. Nix’s vocals get jarringly harsh at certain points but feel passionate and authentic. It’s a good attempt at reviving the momentum but comes too-little-too-late in terms of the overall package.
Once in a Blue Moon is actually a very good album when you break it down into its individual parts but, presented as a whole, it loses points for being interesting for 18 minutes and then effectively dragging on towards a mostly unsatisfying conclusion. As this is Nix’s 5th full length album one would expect more attention paid to the sequencing and presentation of the record as a whole, but for the first five songs this is surely worth checking out or downloading the individual tracks on iTunes.
Download here:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/once-in-a-blue-moon/id1060338239
