Member:
BrianG
(Profile)
(All Album Reviews by BrianG)
Date:
7/29/2007
Format:
CD (Album)
Beard of Bees is Mike Gaito’s essentially solo affair, recorded at home, with only one occasional guest on drums. It ends up being a very personal release, rich in his high vocals and folky guitar playing. The 15 pieces range from musing acoustic numbers similar to Louden Wainwright III to early acoustic Flaming Lips, minus the drama.
In the liner notes, Mike gets to blog about each song. We even get Mike’s thoughts about this project, including a long thank you letter to his influences. A little TMI (too much information) for me.
I will say it again about solo releases – everyone, even Bob Dylan – needs an editor. No matter how astounding one’s talent is, it is best to bounce ideas off a reasonable mind before publishing. Mike Gaito’s release successfully gets beyond the early stages of technical and artistic workmanship (It’s really a very good, enjoyable album) only to fall victim to a lack of lasting appeal due to its inwardness. Hopefully Mike will keep at it, while becoming more gregarious!
Member:
Windhawk
(Profile)
(All Album Reviews by Windhawk)
Date:
7/19/2008
Format:
CD (Album)
(originally written for www.prog4you.com)
Mike Gaito is a musician based in Vermont, USA; and Beard of Bees is his debut solo album. It was released back in October 2006, and is a self-released album.
Musically, this is pretty much about folk music. Not Irish folk though. Not Spanish either. It's more like folk like musicians involved in the hippie and prog scene used to play it way back when. Mike Gaito is a follower of the mellow tradition that started in that era; most tracks here are rather slow, very mellow and highly melodic.
Variation is created by Gaito inserting some jazzy influences here and there, and by some tempo and style changes inserted in some of the songs. It never gets loud or noisy though - this release is all about the calm, mellow and relaxing stuff.
Which is my basic problem with this release. Music this mellow needs some very strong and atmospheric moods to remain interesting for me, if not it needs some elements bringing tension and nerve to the music - or it needs variation. And none of those elements are present for me on this release.
Most of the tracks are nice, there are a few fillers, but most of them are ok. But none of the songs really caught my interest to a further degree than for me to want to listen to this again someday that I'd have a need for some mellow music though.
If you're a big fan of mellow music in general and mellow folk in particular this one may be of interest to you. But I don't believe this release will be of much interest to people not into similar stuff from before.
My rating: 52/100
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