Marble Mouth E.P.

Album Review

One-man band This Song Is a Mess But So Am I (aka Freddy Ruppert) isn't very interested in metaphors. He prefers to state exactly what he's thinking and doesn't feel the need to sugarcoat any of it. So the fact that his EP, Marble Mouth, contains songs like "Is This Childish Enough Sean Ford?" (in response to a certain music writer's criticism of his debut album), Church Point, LA, "Lonely Way," about his father's loneliness, and "Brother," about well, his brother, isn't much of a surprise. Neither is the fact that This Song Is a Mess But So Am I's music is quite, um, messy. While some of it, like the aforementioned "Lonely Way," which has comprehensible New Order-ish vocals over a desolate, new wave-inspired beat, has some structure to it, most of the other tracks seem to be formed by sporadic, convulsing hand movements that hit various keyboard and drum programming buttons almost at random. "Faces," with its assaulting noise and hollow synth reference to "Hot Cross Buns," must be what it sounds like to be stuck inside a video game, and while "Congratulations" does incorporate some techno-inspired beats, there's such a barrage of other gritty, angry noises, that's it's hard to understand how, exactly, it works as a song. Ruppert has admitted to using his music as a way to vent his emotions and to express himself, which is as worthy of a reason as any, but Marble Mouth is so unstructured that it's really more of a self-indulgent album than anything that could serve as catharsis or inspiration. There's feeling here, but that's about all.