Mayfly

Jason Karaban | Format: MP3 Download

Product Details

• Original Release Date: April 7, 2009
• Label: Ascend Records
• Copyright: 2009 Ascend Records
• Genres:
• ASIN: B001UDLM3K
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #561,692 Paid in MP3 Albums (See Top 100 Paid in MP3 Albums)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than chocolate!, April 8, 2009

By 

Mary Jones - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mayfly (MP3 Download)

These songs take your heart and mind to an infinite melancholy place where all the hearts desires can be attained! I pensively await more songs to fill my playlist and daydreams!

5.0 out of 5 stars Jason has done it again!, April 8, 2009

By 

AJ "AJ" - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mayfly (MP3 Download)

Once again Jason Karaban has outdone himself! This EP brings a smile to the face and tears to the heart, flawlessly. I cannot wait to hear more from this fabulous artist!

5.0 out of 5 stars All too brief EP of haunted despair and melancholy, April 7, 2009

By 

hyperbolium (Earth, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mayfly (MP3 Download)

Karaban's released a trio of exquisitely beautiful pop records, 2006's Doomed to Make Choices, its cohort Leftovers, and last year's Sobriety Kills. Now busy in the studio on a follow-up, he's issued this striking three-song EP. Each of Karaban's releases seems more pensive than the last, and these stripped-down piano-and-voice arrangements are at once meditative in instrumental tone and expansive in melodic heft. Inspired by a letter from a Civil War general to his wife, Karaban's written songs whose moodiness conjures up the desolation and fear that soldiers endure before and after battle.

The opening "Sullivan's Ballou" is played with the piano's dampers up, chords floating reflectively in their own sustain, intertwining with wordless vocal backing and ghostly images of fallen comrades laying dead in open fields. The harmony vocal of "No Casualties" clings more tightly to the lead, but even with Chris Joyner's piano playing more ornate patterns, a sense of dread is heard in the defeated undertaking of retreat. The closing "A Far Better Place" is similarly joyless in its declaration of victory, with a piano played up front chiming like funeral bells as the vocals recede into the hereafter.

Earlier comparisons with Michael Penn and Jason Falkner fail to capture the essence of despair permeating these new tracks. Even Karaban's previous releases do not adequately prepare listeners for these spare, down-tempo readings. That said, the song craft that was built up in layers on Sobriety Kills now allows Karaban to intensify his emotional impact by stripping tracks to their basics. It's daring to let your melodies and vocals stand naked before listeners' ears, but Karaban has the goods, trusts his art and shares the rewards. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]