BRENT FLOREN
High Horse (self-released)
Reviewed by Holly Day

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This is really frustrating to listen to, because there is just so much here that I do like, but it doesn't quite work. Musically, this is a lot like the crazy country/southwestern arrangements that Johnny Dowd puts behind his songs, which I absolutely adore, but then Floren starts singing and it just ruins it all for me. I guess that's not really a nice thing for me to say, but his voice just drives me nuts. It's so overwrought that I can't shake the image of some guy hanging all over a microphone, pointing out at some undefined spot in the audience to punctuate his great feelings of achey-ness, occasionally clasping at his chest in an exaggeration of anguish. The vision goes on to include a bright red shirt open at the collar, some dangly chains, and a lot of that awful hair grease that I've always imagined guys in karaoke bars wear. Oh, and a moustache! I can't forget the pencil-thin black moustache creeping along my imagined Brent Floren's upper lip, like a pair of black inchworms kissing. So musically, I give this an A, but for bizarre creepy mental images that accompany the singing I don't like, I have to give Floren an, oh, a C-?

[Pick this up at CDBaby.]

© 2005 - Holly Day