'You smell like you normally do'

So, here is the first day, and the first band of this little project. Deciding on where to find my bands and artists took all of a nanosecond, as i rembered that last time i logged on to myspace i spent about 10 minutes ignoring friend requests from various bands. And that was almost a year ago. So now i have a veritable bottomless pit of amateur bands and artists to pick from. I don't want to spend all my time reviewing independent bands like this but i'm sure a few will be fine.
So, without further adu, i bid you all welcome to the musical stylings of

GOATBOY



Now, according to his Myspace, this is the lead singer from a band i actually already have added as a friend. In fact i had been to see them a couple of times before since they are based extremely close to where i live. I wasn't a great fan of the band but i appreciated a kind of querkiness which a lot of amateur bands i've seen seem to lack. So anyway i was happy to give this guy a listen, and despite more than a few fallings, he's actually not half bad.

The first problem i have with this guy is how he labels his music: Ska/Acoustic/Rock. Well i may not know everything there is to know about music, but i certainly don't see even a hint of ska in any of the songs i listened to (for future reference, the bands playlist on myspace will generally be the extent of my listening, unless said playlist is too small to build any sort of opinion.) and as the rock part? mmm maybe not so much. But there's definately acoustics. 1 out of 3 not bad, eh?
So we begin with the track 'The Tree' which, in general is a nice song. The opening melody is good and the melancholy xylophone contrasts nicely with stong percussion. Use of background sounds is rather odd though and i can't exactly think where it's appropriate to include monkey screeches and applauding crowds in a song about a tree, but i'll overlook that since they do fit in quite nicely. Lyric wise, the melody isn't horrible. Ok so that's a bit mean but it gets incredibly repetitive and although the song is split into 3 rough sections, each seperate melody repeats itself far too much, and i'm not entirely sure the 3 fit together all that well. The quality of singing is a relatively small issue here because he's not terrible by any means, he just needs to stop singing out of his nose.
The songs generally continue in this style - that mixture of melancholy instrumentals and nasal singing. One song of note is 'Undead Army' which is presented in the style of an army march, and he does this rather well in singing style although the lack of percussion in this one is dissapointing. I can only assume the wolf/bear noise in the background is trying to compensate for that. Also the odd screeches leave something to be desired but overall the song isn't bad.
One sing i really did like was the instrumental 'The saddest song in the world'. Ignoring this rather undesirable title, it's a very nice melancholy tune with a great, if not clumsy, melody. Although if i'm honest the slightly awkward woodwind actually does well in creating this atmosphere somewhere between a funerial durge and a creepy abandoned fairground theme song. Unfortunately it's not nearly long enough. Not bad by any means, but i'm not sure i enjoy the image of a clown slitting his wrists that this this song gives me...

If i had to sum up this guy in two monosyllabic words, they would have to be 'not bad' . You'll hear the odd gem of a melody or intrumental, such as the nice backing chorus at the end of 'You feel OK' however on the flip side there are a few more dissapointing elements to his music. The lyrics of 'You feel OK' for instance which include the line 'You smell like you normally do' and are expressed in a repetitive, dreary tone make me wonder if maybe he could have spent just a little more time fine tuning a few things, and he might be just that bit better.