Everyone w/ a laptop and a facebook account (which is everyone) is a DIY musician now, naturally replacing their Christian name with a handle apropos for a full band, right? What else is new? How do these souls get attention from the masses? (Tough question since they themselves are the masses, by and large). Sound quality is no longer an issue - being audible is enough for myspace and 128 kbps - and besides, any wannabe can, on a pittance, get decent enough equipment to make the days of 4-tracks as distant as piano rolls. And if solid storytelling were enough to capture the public’s attention then Michael Bay would be out of a job (and what a wonderful world that would be), so unfortunately, good sound and good material might not be enough in today’s world. Which could be a problem for Lost On Purpose.
Will Holland of (is, that is) Lost On Purpose has an album’s worth of iTunes downloads that falls under the name Not If But When, which, if you’re tired of self-aggrandizing one-man-bands, is worth a listen. It could even simplify your life and quell your troubled mind with instrumentation and wry observations that don’t waste time.
Take the track ‘guts’, for example - it lasts just over a minute but makes me laugh with the line, “I wish that you broke up with me so I could write 20 songs, but stop in the middle and get drunk.” NIBW has more than a few of those moments that you will unconsciously regurgitate as advice to a sad friend, or a punchline at a party that will make you think, Did I make that up? Wow, I’m cleverer than I thought…
Being wry and casual is nothing new, but works in a pinch. Pretensions, on the other hand, don’t win over many friends, and track 6 ‘ksu interlude’, in which a news ticker plays over a nice melody says very little except, “I can use a laptop real good.” Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Silent Night’ is a disquieting juxtaposition of lullaby and dirge, but here it’s just a throwaway. Still, the rest are sharp little vignettes full of fill-in-the-blanks imagery, mortality with a funny face, moments within a sprawling one-act (‘The 70’s’ is a particularly choice cut - I recommend it).
It’s not a bad thing to resist giving everything you have for a single project, and Not If But When is more a sample of the goods than the full delivery. The songs aren’t a Floydian journey to far-away psychic shores, but lines like, “You remind me why I left Ohio,” bring listener and singer close together. It helps too if you’ve ever been to Amherst, OH - you’ll understand where native son Holland gets this angle, but anyone can find a reason to want to leave their place of origin. NIBW has plenty of moments like this - sample some Will Holland when you’re done w/ GarageBand junkies that pummel w/ proof of how different they are.
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