If great pain makes great art, Brendan Gamble's solo debut, Heartless Moon, should be played in the Louvre while museum patrons view morose paintings mirroring the anguish that inspired his songs. The former Poster Children/Moon Seven Times drummer/multi-instrumentalist has created a stripped down and gorgeous acoustic album that bleeds with a quiet intensity as it documents the turmoil of his divorce from M7X vocalist Lynn Canfield. On Heartless Moon, Gamble has combined the contemporized English folk legacy of Nick Drake's slim catalog and the American singer/songwriter ethic of James Taylor and Jackson Browne at its most innocent and affecting, throwing in touches of Andy Bown and Freedy Johnston, with stunning results. The bare soundscape that Gamble establishes for his songs, with only the briefest outside instrumental help from Steve Lamos and Brian Wilke, perfectly complements the naked emotions that inspired the songs in the first place. The most important quality that Gamble invests in Heartless Moon is subtlety, because without a light touch these 13 tracks are little more than mewling about lost love and, when done poorly, there is little that is less appealing. Thankfully, Gamble never overplays the emotionalism of his heartbreak, preferring to examine and translate it rather than wallowing in its aftermath. That is the trickiest wirewalk facing any singer/songwriter and Gamble has successfully created one of the rarest entities in music: an album that is joyous and endlessly listenable in its melancholy and despair. (Brian Baker)

Unlike his old bands, the hard pop Poster Children or the dreamy the Moon Seven Times, Brendan Gamble's solo debut is a good old-fashioned piece of '70s-style singer/songwriter mopery, closer in mood to Joni Mitchell's Blue than Nick Drake's Pink Moon, though sharing similarities with both. All 13 of these songs were written during the breakup of Gamble's marriage to his former partner in the Moon Seven Times, Lynn Canfield, and lyrically, they're exactly the mixture of recrimination, resignation, sadness, black humor, and anger that usually accompanies the breakup of a relationship. (Not since Til Tuesday's Everything's Different Now has a full album examined a failed relationship so obsessively without sounding mawkish or self-pitying.) The production, by Trina Shoemaker (Kristin Hersh, Victoria Williams), is stripped down without being barebones minimalism; Gamble's acoustic guitar and fragile voice are at the center of the songs, but Gamble and Shoemaker add just enough extra instrumentation (bass, keyboards, lap steel, occasional drums, and on the memorable title track, a gorgeous cornet solo) to keep the songs from sounding too much alike. Pretty though most of it is, Heartless Moon isn't always an easy listen, but fans of sensitive-guy pop, from James Taylor and Jackson Browne to Josh Rouse and Red House Painters, will love it.

My poptodd moment continued:

its been a whole two minutes and no one else is praising the magnificence of this album yet....argggggggh.

This isn't really a Pop Todd moment until you post this same thread another 5 or 6 times. Then on the 6th time you have to pretend to be surprised there's zero replies.



But about the album itself - this sort of mopey folk/pop/whatchamacallit pretty much lives and dies with great melodies. Nick Drake had 'em in spades. Ditto Joni Mitchell. It's what saves Josh Rouse. It's what made that Joe Pisapia album so gorgeous. And the lack thereof is what (IMO) kills the Red House Painters.

So does Brendan Gamble have the hooks?

This sucks.


Okay now you REALLY know what it's like to be me.


okay, it's not terrible, but I had to do that

I picked this up a few years ago and gave it a sufficient amount of spins but in the end it did very little for me. A couple of decent tracks (the title track being one - I think) but something about it left me feeling "on the outside" of what he was trying to get across. Dunno, it's been a few years maybe I just need to give it another chance.

As for M.Kozelek that Sun Kil Moon reckid is better than ANYTHING he's ever done in my opinion. Although I do have a soft spot for 'Katy's Song' from the first RHP record.