ALBUMS
BY BRYCE HARMON
CHRISTOPHER GRIFFITHS
THE MINOR SECOND
Award-winning Murfreesboro producer and singersongwriter Christopher Griffiths has made his second solo album, an easy, six-song folk-country-rock EP titled Lime Lake Rd., drastically divergent from 2020 dance-pop debut Midlife Pop Crisis. But what Griffiths is doing with Lime Lake Rd. and its endearing country sentiment is even greater than how freakin’ awesome Pop Crisis is. Lime Lake Rd., as a whole, is an autobiographical folk-country journal of a grown son’s life thus far (if not, it’s a brilliant concept album on that topic), and doesn’t waste time getting into the good mushiness. “Day Dreamer” makes an easy-listening country lullaby that angelically fugues the piano and strumplucked mandolin, an electric guitar and bass, then the slide, building up as Griffiths rejoicingly sings to his own kid in amazement of their time together. “Best Part of You,” brings an upbeat toe-tapper that opens up to the country-pop-strummed acoustic, organ and tambourine rhythm shortly before becoming a bedroom wall of sound, adding electric guitar and bass with a harmonica kicker. Lyrically, it’s a lovely girlfriend-appreciation pop-rocker very much in Tom Petty fashion. There’s a lengthy tambourineand-harmonica-heavy solo and bridge to cross, which is as outstanding as finding out the artist does his own backing vocals rightly at the song’s outro. “Take on You” contends for the album’s best as the organ-hum intro returns with bass drum and campfire-side acoustic guitar rhythm, as a star-twinkle synth and a clap-along effect accents the song, which is as rowdy as Lime Lake Rd. gets. The album’s namesake comes from the Cedars, Michigan, road on which Griffith’s father lived. I’m assuming country was Mr. Griffiths’ genre of choice, as the track titled “Lime Lake Road” presents an easy, comfortable country strum with an electric guitar to accent this warm remembrance of a rain falling on the roof of his Dad’s place. It’s Mr. Griffiths’ song from an album Chris made in his memory, letting the father know the son is doing all right in life. Solid.
The Minor Second released its full-length sophomore album, EvilOlive, in 2021 out of Music Row’s The Hit Pit, laboriously following the 2018 debut, Half Step, which raised such questions for the band as “has that guy on the wall been staring for a while?” and “did he try coke at that party?” As for EvilOlive, vocalist Trevor Evans-Young raises such questions as “is this a concept album about modern, daily orthodox religious practices?” and “is this the partial musical diary of a marriage?” All questions raised by The Minor Second’s catalogue remain open to interpretation. EvilOlive wields a variation of Talking Heads and The Smiths influences, adding nuances of dark punk that nod to Danzig. These, along with similarities to the vocal style of The National’s Matt Berninger, contribute to creating The Minor Second’s sound. Pertaining to the Danzig-fication, The Minor Second—a band that cranked up in Murfreesboro back in 2006 as The Transcenders—gets a little sinister with a four-song suite starting with “Disdain,” interchanging spooky Morrissey/Interpol with the gloomier sound, about a weary traveler pondering against folks’ night lives while, seemingly, on an Australian vacation (honeymoon?). In a pitchy, ghostly vocal over a brooding Smiths-meets-Bauhaus style, “Glory” describes an Old Testament-minded cyborg with a singularity phobia. The dark grunge continues on “Blasphemy,” and rounding out this suite, “Compound World” is a darkly punk-ified, teeny-pop love song somewhat of a satire of Rubber Soul’s “Girl” in its Morrissey/Berninger vocality, only, this time Morrissey and the backup vocalists are dead. A raw power guitar solo halfway through “Stunned by Time” transforms The Minor Second from mysteriously conceptual to amped entirely. It’s a hell of an outro for EvilOlive. It’s just a shame that waited to happen until halfway through the last song. Find The Minor Second’s EvilOlive at theminorsecond.bandcamp.com.
Lime Lake Rd.
EvilOlive
BOROPULSE.COM
* JULY 2021 * 17
