The sixty-second album: #62 Fred Neil - Fred Neil
I don't think I quite got folk music. It really feels like my parents' music - or mostly my father, in my case. It has a dated feel to it and it takes some time to get past that. Bob Dylan manages to do that with some evocative lyrics (though it may be a bit much to describe him as purely a folk rock musician) and later fine experiments, but Fred Neil doesn't do it quite as well. While there are certainly some interesting sounds in here, for a large part they feel like basic country . The lyrics, when they're present, don't do much for me and on the whole it didn't get me, where other albums do so from the start.
It's not that the lyrics are bad, but musically they simply don't inspire me. Case in point is the big song from the album, Everybody's Talking. Sure, it sounds fine, with a decent message, but it just never manages to grab me and make me interested. A bunch of the vocal stuff he does - mumblng at times, a weird vibrato at others, also feel weirdly affected, unnecessary and to me a bit off putting. I guess it's his style, but then it's a style I don't care for. It's a shame, but on the whole this feels lacklustre compared to what I want.