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Andy McWilliams Creates A Soundscape to Live By

Shoegazer EP is the new Soundtrack to Your Day

Andy McWilliams

Shoegazer

Released on Sep 11, 2008

It’s rare to hear an artist whose music is strictly instrumental and is not a DJ or a composer.  An album loaded with strings and piano parts seems more suitable for your mother’s sophisticated girls’ night than your playlist during your daily commute.  Andy McWilliams says “pshaw” to those conventions.  A member of the band The Scattered Pages, the multi-instrumentalist McWilliams broke off for a solo EP The Shoegazer in 2007.  Usually side projects don’t impress me too much, as most of them end up sounding too much like the artist’s original band to warrant the name “side project.”  Where the Scattered Pages is an unusual blend of cabaret pop and southern rock/folk, McWilliams is the music of dreams.  Soothing and romantic, The Shoegazer EP takes McWilliams in an entirely new direction. 

The Shoegazer EP is mainly instrumental but plays like the elaborate and mystical soundtrack to a movie rather than chamber music.  McWilliams mixes electronic beats and strings with their live acoustic counterparts to create an interesting mix of the synthetic and organic.  This dynamic creates an interesting feeling within the album, with tracks that feel almost like reality but too otherworldly to be concrete.  McWilliams isn’t afraid to use electronic music to achieve the right sound and understands composition is more than just strings and horns.  “Mailbomb,” the only track on Shoegazer that features McWilliams singing, starts off with a distorted acoustic guitar before breaking into an explosion of bass beats and synthesized strings.  It makes for an interesting auditory experience, trying to discern what is real and what is fabricated but being so entranced by the song itself that it doesn’t matter. 

Music generally inspires a mood, and all the tracks on Shoegazer pull you right into the atmosphere of McWilliams.  It’s haunting, demure, and even at times aggressive.  It’s hard to make an instrumental EP that doesn’t fall into the category of background music but McWilliams manages to escape this by making a fluid album.  “By Boat” is by far the most electronic song on the album, but starts off with a solid bass line before evolving into a going into a downtempo groove that strays from the original jazz beat.  The track never sounds forced and easily transforms itself without a hokey breakdown.  Ever-changing and ever-moving, Shoegazer keeps it’s tracks fresh to avoid musical boredom.  It would be interesting to see McWilliams expand upon what he started on the EP.  Seven tracks equaling to sixteen minutes can hardly describe his entire solo career.  The tracks do work well with each other but Shoegazer is more of a showcase of McWilliams talent than a full piece to personify it. 

Posted by Amy Dittmeier on Jun 30, 2009 @ 6:00 am