chestnut blight - The Lonely Heart Wanders, Broken

Chestnut Blight

The Lonely Heart Wander, Broken

3.1 out of 5

By Ted Rogen

The Lonely Heart Wanders, Broken by Chestnut Blight starts off with 57 seconds of one of the coolest sounds I have heard. I wanted the remainder of the album to have some other cool sounds but unfortunately it does not.  This set of songs is basically acoustic guitar over vocals that are barely recognizable and clearly distorted. It’s a shame that the production is so bad because there were some decent songs here that may have been a lot better if they didn’t distort and I could hear the vocals. The album consists of six songs that were recorded live and sound like they are in desperate need of a sound engineer.

The first song called “Untitled on a Sunday Afternoon” sounded like a string effect being looped and then manipulated by a de-pitched violin – awesome. I was convinced I would hear some more cool experimental sounds but instead was treated with “Pre Blizzard” which is a lone somber sounding acoustic guitar melody that could have worked if the vocals weren't so disappointingly recorded. It kind of reminded me of David Thomas Broughton who is one of my favorite acoustic musicians but often has recordings that sound dismal and affect the song itself. “Yeah” is too distorted and needs to be rerecorded in order to be a passable song. “You Wanted to Be” sounds less distorted but is still plagued from the horrible sounding recording that does little to redeem the decent song that lays underneath.

Besides the first song the other decent song was “Lockjaw with Violin” which contains an actual violin. I think I was starting to enjoy the song because it was starting to sound experimental and not like a guy with an acoustic guitar but a guy who was going into avant-garde territory. After listening to this album Chestnut Blight needs to either start being more experimental with his approach or get better recording equipment to record his songs so we can actually hear some of them. That or go into an actual studio and do some recording there. There is some talent behind some of these songs and may be worthwhile to check out if he can find an engineer to work with to get his skills and equipment better.

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