Owen Franklin - Portrait of the Young Man as an Artist - CD (2011)

Labels: self released
Review by: Thomas Strawbridge

Andy hates me. This terrible, terrible singer-songwriter’s record is my proof. The only positive to this cd is that the guy can sing in tune and press keys on the piano. This is fucking awful, the first two tracks are an exercise in over-instrumentation and the quieter tracks that follow don’t work any better. An insert with no lyrics (a good move given what I can make out) contains helpful notes on what ‘the artist’ was attempting to achieve – but at no point uses the words ‘to inspire a feeling of complete despair such as the knowledge of slow death’. I make it through to the first single after a journey I can only describe as tortuous; this sends me off the cliff face. I skip to the final song with its spine tingling outro. More like bone chilling. In the vain hope that this is the only copy I took the precaution of snapping the cd before filling my bin.