Dominick Campana - Triggers & Waves

​Dominick Campana

Triggers & Waves
self-released; 2026

​By Dino DiMuro

Dominick Campana is both a musical artist and the guy who ran Paint Chip Records in New York in the 90's and early 2000's. He produced a number of cool bands, and his colorful history is fun to peruse on his website. As a solo artist he's just released a new album titled Triggers & Waves. 

A fun thing about this album is that you can see photos of Campana's home studio All Mod Sound in Voorheesville New York, and it's an actual studio you can book yourself that's surprisingly affordable. He calls his music "sort of indie-alt-pop, with comparisons between Aimee Mann and Sloan" and I've also seen George Harrison mentioned. Campana is a true one-man band and engineer: he starts out by jamming to chords or riffs, which inspire vocal melodies, which leads to finishing his tracks wearing his "Producer" hat. 

"It's Never All Right" reveals a minor key rock sound heavy with Rhodes-like keys, digital strings and jangly electric guitar. Campana's singing voice features one of those mid-to-low conversational styles like Gerry Rafferty. It's a good first song, but the stabbing chords and romping beat of "Angels Nonetheless" really woke me up, very similar stylistically to the Beatles track "Getting Better" with an overlay of retro-sci-fi. The Mellotron chorus featuring the lyrics "All the lesser fallen angels / Are angels nonetheless" (what a great sentiment!) is bathed in "Lucy In The Sky" Mellotron and Lennon-like vocal padding. The final section lets loose some killer guitar riffage. 

"The Moral Dilemma of Having Nice Things" is another great song idea, musically similar to the previous track but with an acoustic guitar structure that slowly descends like a ladder into an abandoned well, with Campana's vocal sounding like he just got over a cold. "Nature of All Things" is another acoustic-based tune, this one similar to America with vocals that betray a hint of Jagger. More great lines here like "I can life with my mistakes, and die without my pride" and "Love it or leave it is stupid."

"Give It Up" begins like a more easygoing version of "Born to Run" and is surprisingly upbeat for a song where the narrator uses his relationship as a bargaining chip ("I'm gonna give it up if you don't tell me what you need"). Just a note here that many of these songs are around three minutes or less, which makes for a compact but satisfying listening experience. 

"Shattered in Gold" is anchored with the bass guitar melodies, with acoustic guitar and drums marching alongside. The standouts here are the beautiful closing vocal and guitar harmonics. "Lower the Bar (Indie Cred)" is a song I was looking forward to just for the title, and I wasn't disappointed! The driving rock structure was like getting several B-12 shots at once, and I could totally relate to the lyrics: "I know I’m not a singer, but I can sing a song / I know I’m not a drummer, but I can play along / It’s a new generation but the same old starstruck locals / And I don’t give a damn about your breathy bedroom vocals." There's also an amazing psychedelic garage band section that I could have listened to for another hour. 

After the Satie-inspired instrumental "Circles" we end the set with "All We Can Do" with a familiar Campana structure and more great lyrics: "When the lesser of two evils becomes the greater good / It doesn't matter what you had planned / All we can do is all we can do." Though I think I prefer Campana's guitar-based songs, this one throws me a bone with a cool middle-section solo. 

All in all this is an excellent collection, with some good tracks paired with some truly great ones. Check the man out!

paintchiprecords.com/catalog/triggers-waves/

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