n.Lannon
Chemical Friends
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Nyles Lannon's credits include the band Film School and an electronic project, n.In, but as n.Lannon he could fill the shoes vacated by indie-rock's best folk-guitar finger-picker, Elliott Smith. He uses Smith's so-wrong-it's-right sense of melody, phrasing and even recording technique on tender titles like "Hollow Heart" and "Turn Time Around." Throughout the rest of the acoustic/electronic, ambient pop package, he devises ways to showcase his gentle voice and picking prowess, mostly succeeding at hiding its folkier charms with synthesized washes of sound and beat (as on the faded and freaked-out tracks "Demons" and "The Nature of Things"). But the close-to-the-bone finger-stylings of "Fortune
Read More Cookie" and "Spy" and the gold, ol' folky strumming on "Cruel" cannot hide their ghosts of Smith and those other slouching troubadours who came before him. Lannon proves himself capable of keeping up with his idols, but he needs to find a voice of his own.
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