In case you missed it: Review of Time Travels at Design It Together, more

The Pleasants, live in Troy 11/11/11

In case you missed it, I wrote up a review for the local music site Nippertown of a recent Time Travels/The Pleasants double bill at Design It Together’s studio in downtown Troy. An excerpt:

Relentlessly optimistic to the point of defiance, singer-songwriter Frank P. McGinnis – alias Time Travels – happily took his place before his small and intimate crowd. His vocals alternated between subtle reflection and late ’90s grandiosity, reminiscent in some ways of Dashboard Confessional but with a more polished voice and less of an axe to grind. His lyrics also focused more on storytelling, admitting in-between songs that he often found a distance between what he was going through at a specific time and what subjects he ended up inserting into his songs. In that sense, he became more Harry Chapin than Chris Cabrera, a welcome recourse to the stifling self-involvement that plagues so many guys and gals with guitars. This came through in songs like “Benny” and “Georgie,” two companion pieces about two brothers and their lives’ travails. There were, too, some more personal compositions, such as the song “You” and “The Eye,” the latter of which was dedicated to his father. Yet there seemed to be much more reflection than one would expect in someone so young, and the songs took a view of the subjects in the context of a larger scope rather than simply telegraphing a specific emotion or kneejerk reaction.

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Semi-related: Emily Rippe for All Over Albany has a profile of former Jupiter Sunrise and The Orange frontman, Ben Karis-Nix (aka BenKN).