Despite the havoc it’s wreaked with everything else in our lives, on a purely creative/musical level, the pandemic’s given us many silver linings – including more than a handful of recording in a multitude of genres that might not exist except for usually performing/touring artists being house and studio bound during its early days.
One indie pop/rock case in point is singer/songwriter Jaime d’Almeida (dba The Timbre Project) joining forces with longtime collaborator Jason DeWaard (from different studio locations) to create the sparkling, sometimes jangling, often atmospheric, intensely infectious, thoughtful and soulful set Chasing A Sound.
It’s his first full length album since 2017’s Treating a Tropical Depression. Judging from his previous 15 year gap between recordings, d’Almeida - who first chased his sonic flow as The Timbre Project on 1999’s Free Souvenirs – might have kept fans waiting a much longer spell if not for the self-imposed quarantine. So as we face our day to day challenges with Reality 2.0, let’s be grateful, to star with, for the high octane, anthem like pop/rocker “Bitter Pill” (whose spirited guitar driven energy seems designed to help us unswallow it!).
One doesn’t have to be parent to be caught into the string section sweetness and pop/symphonic flow “She Kept Me Up,” or be in a strangely complicated love to the enjoy the divine wordplay of the slow-strumming “Hold Me, Wait” – but perhaps it would help to have seen the most painful and the most pleasurable sides of love to connect with the collection’s contrasting emotional centerpieces, the hypnotic and sensual, then bustling – and wildly devastating – “Thorns” and the garage band raw and plainspoken, harmony driven devotion “Anchor Love” (whose title the singer repeats like a mantra for a successful life.
The unique album title Chasing a Sound comes from another gem, the dreamy and meditational “So Much for Cooler Things,” which happily assures us, in a time we need to hear it most, that “love will circle back again.”
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