reviews / 2010

SCOTT TUMA - Dandelion

Name: SCOTT TUMA – Dandelion
Item: Dandelion
Rating: 5.5
Author: Francesco Nunziata

2010 (Digitalis ltd.)

ambient, Americana, psych-folk

by Francesco Nunziata

5.5

With "Dandelion", Scott Tuma manages to reach the intimate peak of his artistic journey and, at the same time, also its lowest point in terms of songwriting.

His surreal take on "Americana" has been one of the most interesting achievements of the last decade, and on this, his fourth release, the Chicago musician, while disappointing, sets off once again, grappling with a blend of dusty frontier visions and restless ambient expansions. Small acoustic sketches covering an emotional spectrum whose extremes are represented by brief flashes of off-the-cuff lyricism ("Oakum", "The Roses are Red") and gloomy immersions in the everyday ("Red Roses for Me" and the memory tunnel of "Again and Again").

It's all well within the norm, unfortunately, even though his unmistakable touch and existential inflections keep stirring up an intriguing play of light and shadow. And indeed, when the album does manage to properly draw us in (the anguished cosmic-folk dusk of "Free Dirt", for instance), things take on a sinister light, revealing aspects of reality that all too often slip past us. But in the listless guitar dissertations of "Hope Jones (Jason's Song)" and in the watercolor of "True History" there's too little substance to let it slide.

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02/05/2010

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Francesco Nunziata, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition