Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Review: Franck Carducci - Oddity (2011)

Originally written for Rate Your Music: How I came about Franck Carducci's debut album is a bit off the beaten path. Franck had emailed me several months ago with regards to getting airplay for the album on my progressive rock radio program Somewhere Between Sunrise & Sunset; which airs Tuesday nights locally on the dial at 88.3FM, WBWC or live from anywhere in the world at wbwc.com (::shameless plug::). The email got lost in the mix of many other emails as I was doing some organizing and forwarding to different email accounts. It took me about 5 months to come across it and get back in touch with him. With that being said, I went into the album with absolutely no expectations. I came out on the other end of it feeling refreshed and with deep feelings of having been privileged to have listened to this debut album, Oddity. The opening track "Achilles" feels like early-Genesis and early-Marillion all rolled into one. I only say that to highlight the fact that he seems to have captured the feeling of both classic 70's era progressive rock and 80's era neo-progressive rock and mold it into something very modern. And, hey, what do ya know? He pays homage to one of the classics by including a cover of "The Carpet Crawlers." Days after first listening to it in full I find myself spinning the album for the 10th time now and what gets stuck in my head, but the lyrics to "The Quind." The rest of the album flows down a similar path. There is a touch of folk in "The Eyes of Age" and the radio edit of "Alice's Eerie Dream" highlights the catchier bits of the tune but you will do yourself a disservice by not listening to the entire 12-minute slab of progressive rock that has some air guitar worthy guitar leads throughout. Recently, he's opened for the likes of Steve Hackett and bands better start to watch out because they will opening for him very soon.

Preview the album over on bandcamp and be sure to stop by his page and "like" what he is doing as well.