Jacob Donnelly is a guitarist from Cambridge, Massachusetts who has spent the past seven years mastering the instrument. He humbly refers to himself as an “up and coming” artist, but this would be selling his talents short. To quote Radiohead, anyone can play guitar, but not anyone can play it well.” Some people simply have an innate musical flair, and it is all too apparent that Donnelly is one of those people.
“Is Anyone There?” makes a powerful statement as an opener to Donnelly’s four-track EP, entitled Tetrachromacy. When I imagine a rock opener to any album, I hear something stark that jolts the listener out of their seat. Think of the introduction to “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” While Jacob Donnelly traverses pop-punk and alternative music, which is an entirely different genre to The Beatles, his opening track gives me that same face-melting feeling. A voice asks, “Hello, is anyone there?” and that’s the end of the vocals for the album. A call-and-answer distorted guitar passage follows. Pop-punk power chords jump to sizzling lead guitar arpeggios; back and forth they go. The lead guitar melody, to my ears, almost serves as a replacement for a vocal melody. It gives the instrumental track some variety and layering. That’s an important tool for an instrumental musician. It can be hard to keep a listener’s attention without vocals, but Donnelly does it well. On the title track “Tetrachromacy,” Donnelly truly cements his style of delivering nostalgic chord progressions underneath sizzling, cutting lead guitar melodies. The guitar speaks for him, as corny as that might sound. I’m not often fully engaged with entirely instrumental albums, but “Tetrachromacy” is a real trip. The main track is driven by punchy pop-punk drums, reminiscent of early Green Day, The Offspring and Fall Out Boy. It feels raw, yet the smooth, sliding lead guitar feels polished. This richly-layered tune is the stand-out on the album, which is what I would have expected, given that it shares the EP’s name. “Pearl River” is an absolutely stunning third track. A mesmerizing atmospheric daydream. Reverberating guitar drifts ceaselessly in the distance as a warbling finger-picked chord progression, driven by a psychedelic flanger effect, carries the song forwards. It marks a pleasant change of pace for the album, demonstrating Donnelly’s range as an artist. I would have loved to hear more tranquil tracks such as this, so hopefully he’ll delve more into this style on future releases. The closing track, “The 3 Count” is a powerful return to the earlier pop-punk and rock influences which were present earlier on the EP. The song is driven by a slow, thudding beat, crunchy power chords and sharp lead guitar passages which felt more inspired by hard rock or perhaps even classic metal groups than pop-punk. It created a nice blend of styles, as the melody of the song was still upbeat and firmly rooted in pop-punk. But the fast-paced drum fills and scorching riffs heavily indicated Donnelly’s other influences. This was a hefty rock album, at the end of the day. For a music fan who rarely delves into fully instrumental albums, I was pleasantly surprised. Donnelly’s skillful musicianship is most likely to thank for that.
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