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Matt Campbell with Jordan Hull and Evan P. Donohue

Presented by The End at The End

April 14, 2011

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Playing with words and ideas, Evan P. Donohue creates part-fiction characters loosely tied together by the stories he has collected living in California, New York, and now finding a home at the heart of the underground music scene in Nashville, Tenn. Teaming up with drummer and arranger Mike Kavouras, as well as some very talented accompanying musicians, the pair have developed a buzz in Music City as a unique and entertaining live act. Donohue answered his growing demand in the studio with a debut full-length album entitled "Rhythm & Amplitude". The album's opening lines introduce you to the clever lyrical games Donohue plays alongside the music:

I am under this spell of a melody/ It's an epidemic in the key of D/ Its simple, its sophisticated/ Play it for me once, I'll have heard it thousands of times

It seems unfair to confine the music of such an eccentric and talented person like Evan P. Donohue to any sort of written definitions, especially because the genre-crossing songs he plays will only work to prove you otherwise. Certainly, there are elements of rock, pop, and Americana to the band's sound, and nods to Elvis Costello, The Strokes, The Rolling Stones, and Of Montreal are hard to miss, but the most pervasive quality is just of an indefinable likeableness. It's retro; it's contemporary. It's heavy, but lighthearted. It's fiction, but it's reality. "Rhythm & Amplitude" is a collection of honest lies, where the elegance of the fable proves the importance of the truth.

Masterfully crafting sardonic portraits of decidedly earnest characters, Evan P. Donohue poetically chooses his words to express the struggles and affections his often tragic characters experience by the choices they've faced in life. The surf-rock ballad "California Sunshine" speaks of a middle-aged man who rebels against the monotony of his life, eventually finding peace and happiness "sleeping under Starlight", a prostitute employed at the Mexican brothel where the track gets its title.

Then there are the heavier rockers, like "O Justice!", or the gem "Twickenham Garden", which draws influence from the 16th century John Donne poem of the same name. It is the 21st century tale of an unsatisfied disc jockey who only finds fulfillment in the backbeats of the music he once loved. There is something to appreciate in the sincerity of Donohue's lyrics when combined with the ultra-catchy and accomplished melodies and musical arrangements, as the songs overflow with embracing words and images that are often excluded from polite conversation

 

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