Weird and magical
Eugene Francis Jnr. finally releases “The Golden Beatle”, his debut. If by any condition you think that music is all the same nowadays (and it does seem that way sometimes) and have lost all hope then do not fret! “The Golden Beatle” is bursting with juicy innovations.
Diction. This album is a lesson on how exactly an artist should articulate. Every syllable is pronounced with such incredible accuracy, every word falls on open-ears and the listener is totally captivated by the significance of the lyrics. Eugene Francis Jnr. is not just a musician but it’s worth mentioning that he is in fact a storyteller, a narrator, a poet, a raconteur. Every song tells a tale, addresses a different issue…it’s marvellous.
However this album is a tale of two halves…on the one side it is wonderfully original and the lyrics hold rich meaning and are cleverly formed. On the other it’s a demonstration of some of the most hideous musicality you’ll ever come across, and lacklustre finishing.
“Mistakes I Have Made” was a mistake to include on the album, “My Own Pollution” is sound pollution, and “Sometimes The Good” is terribly bad.
At points the vocalist sounds like he is being strangled by a brazier; squawking and gasping heavily. The musicality is dated, it’s as if the guy is trapped in a time warp. As if he was time capsuled into the new millennium from the mid 80’s. The guitars are too folky, and the sudden bursts of electronic effects are simply too spontaneous, to the point of being nasty to listen to.
So you see, this could be in one respect a rather decent album, but from another angle it could be one of the worst albums ever to be released in the year 2008. It just depends.