Nice Marketing But Dull Music
The idea behind Claire Toomey's 250-copy single release is actually more fascinating than her music itself, which is indie-pop-rock that suffers from the broadness of her choice of metaphors.
Let's investigate: Claire Toomey is from South London. She writes music she likes and wanted to share it, so she played a bunch of shows all over the place, and "lost" her "Found" single (ie. giving it away for free to random people) all over the place. On each single, she wrote a little message asking people to email her to ask about her music, and to pass the single on to someone else who might be interested. This is wonderful. This is exactly how scenes should work: the free exchange of ideas and ... well, stuff that's fun. Take one, use it, and pass it on.
So, top grades to Claire Toomey. Sharing your music in this way is awesome and makes me happy because I don't feel manipulated. If I like it, I can email her and give a friend her EP. The only dilemma is her music itself, which lacks something essentially private that I require from independent music. I like it when an artist addresses the universal through the particular. So, sadness expressed in a specific comment about something lost. I'm thinking mostly of Julie Doiron here, who does this so perfectly you find yourself just as sad as she is about the way swans look in a pond.
Claire Toomey plays guitar and sings beautifully, but her metaphors are so ... pop, but not pop in the positive sense, as in animal attractions to beautiful sounds, but poppy in the enormity of its metaphors. Too much "I" and "You" and directionless aphorisms that try to teach the world what it's already been taught.
Claire, I know that's your point, that there is no specific word for what you've lost or found - but you're falling into a murky and commercial place that's betraying the wonderful way you've shared your music thus far. When your words are as directionless as they are on "Found", they become the language of sales, the language of mass appeal, an expression of the exact same capitalist system you're so beautifully fighting against when you give away home-made CDs.
Write a song about your mother - not a Mother that embodies everyone's Mother, your mother - her hair, what she does when she has a day off from work, what she eats, her eyes when she tells funny stories, all of it, and if you do it right she'll be our mother, too. Or write about something small that you're good at and that you love inexplicably. Something that is yours yours yours. And write it with all the urgency that a person deserves.