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Time Without Consequence

by

Alexi Murdoch

 
Time Without Consequence
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Avg: 4.0 (183 ratings)

A singer-songwriter that won't make you feel like a grown-up — too much.

  • We Say...

    Review by Michael Azerrad

    Singer-songwriter music is a tough sell for me — generally devoid of little things like melody and rhythm, I find it's mostly just wordy, self-obsessed drivel for people who've lost their visceral connection to music — i.e., grown-ups. But unlike lite jazz, I haven't written off the genre completely, and occasionally, the work of people who commit singer-songwriter music does indeed emanate from my personal digital music device. One such perpetrator is Alexi Murdoch, a Scotsman whom I discovered at In the Attic, Pete Townshend and his incorrigible hambone of a girlfriend Rachel Fuller's traveling low-volume revue, during this year's South by Southwest music convention.

    It's almost uncanny, but on his self-released debut album Time Without Consequence, Murdoch rarely uses words of more than two syllables — I think you can count the number of times on one hand — and it lends his gnomic lyrics an oracular clarity. You can hear that on the searching opener, "All My Days" — "I've been trying to find," Murdoch murmurs, "what's been in my mind." Beyond just employing actual rhythms and using actual drums, Murdoch grasps the power of repetition and groove, and isn't afraid to hang onto one chord and repeat phrases like "slowly, slowly, I am drifting" ("Blue Mind") to mesmerizing effect.

    He does fairly vividly recall Nick Drake, one of the scant few other singer-songwriters who aren't a waste of time; and on "Wait," he taps into the same kind of paralyzing melancholy that afflicted St. Nick: "I know I have the strength to move a hill/ I can hardly leave my room." If you've ever been there, you'll probably feel Alexi Murdoch. Oh yeah, the moving "Orange Sky" was apparently quite a favorite on something called The O.C., whatever that is.

  • They Say...

    Review by Stewart Mason, All Music Guide

    After appearing on the soundtrack to the hit TV show The OC, Alexi Murdoch could have easily followed Death Cab for Cutie onto the major label merry-go-round and let a bevy of A&R folks shape him into Next Big Thinghood. Instead, the Scottish singer/songwriter's self-released debut full-length bears haunting similarities to the likes of Nick Drake's Pink Moon, hardly the way to mainstream stardom no matter how many car commercials it inspires. Nearly a third of the album will be familiar to those who already have Murdoch's 2004 EP Four Songs, three-quarters of which is reprised here, including "Orange Sky," the aforementioned small-screen favorite. ("It's Only Fear" is the sole track that didn't make the leap, insuring collector-geek status for the EP.) The remaining eight songs are, in the best possible sense, more of the same, and in the case of the first single "Dream About Flying" and the haunted opener "All My Days," they surpass the older songs. Murdoch's murmuring, Drake-like vocals and John Martyn-style acoustic guitar are at the forefront of the album, with only the most minimal accompaniment. Detractors might dismiss Time Without Consequence as the work of a Cat Stevens for the Garden State generation, but there's a always a place for hushed intimacy and delicate folk-pop singer/songwriters, and Alexi Murdoch fills the bill without the mewling self-absorption of the emo contingent.

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