Summary

I can’t listen to this record without thinking the word "self-indulgent." Imagine you are in a room with a piano, a bass guitar, a microphone and your thoughts. Nothing is written down. In fact, the lyrics and instruments stream out in paragraphs. You talk about your life, friends, family, text message conversations. You sometimes sing, but the rest is basically spoken word.

This about sums up Barr's (Brendan Fowler and Corey Dieckman) new release, Summary. What’s important about this album is the lyrics. Fowler pushes the boundaries of what you can include in a song, but still keeps the songs relatively short. However, Barr pushes this stream-of-consciousness over a bland background of noise. While I appreciate the stripped down sound, it’s hard to pay attention to a mind-bending lyric if I only hear the same note being played over and over again. Maybe I just don’t understand the appeal, but this was a hard album to finish once. The best part? The second song is “The Song is The Single," and the lyrics tell all: “The song is the single and the single sucks/it never sounded good/it always sounded bad.” I can appreciate their honesty.

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