Urban Suite
Leonardo
Independent
2000
11 tracks
Leonardo makes a nice start with the first song on this, his third release, setting the listener up with a quiet folk-storyteller ambience that harks back to artists such as Harry Chapin ("WOLD") or Roger Whittaker ("New World in the Morning"). Some later songs suggest that Leonardo may owe a debt as well to rocking folkies such as Jim Croce ("I Have to Say I Love You in a Song"). There's a promise here, but it never really materializes.
In his covering letter, Leonardo says he is a "singer/songwriter" in the "folk storytelling tradition" and, to some degree, I suppose that's true. The music sounds like a lot of contemporary indie folk that crosses my desk, and the words do tell stories of a sort. It may be that I've become jaded, or at least spoiled by great songs like Peter Sarstedt's "Where do you go to (my lovely)" or Harry Chapin's wonderful "Taxi" and so many great story songs before and since. It may be that other, less jaded ears may be less critical of what is presented here. Certainly I can find little wrong with either the songwriting or the performance on this release.
I do, however, find Leonardo's phrasing more than a bit irritating. Portions of each song, some more than others, sound as though he had written the music and then bent the words out of their natural phrasing and pronunciation in order to make them fit the melody. The result is that most lyrics have sections where the words are hard to discern. "East Chicago" is especially irking in this regard, as throughout the song he sings an incomprehensible something that sounds like "Eachee KAH go" and also inserts a sort of cowboy yodel that's quite out of fit with the rest of the song. Without actually knowing the title or lyrics of the song, the listener must surely struggle to sort out what is being sung.
There is also a sameness to these songs that early on makes the overall set monotonous at best and at times just boring. Mostly this sense derives from the over-regularity of both the guitar backing and the lead vocal and could probably be fixed quite easily by adding more variation to some or all of the songs.
By high school English standards, Leonardo's lyrics are well written. Except for a couple of inverse phrasings, it's hard to fault them at that level. However, there's little or nothing to make them stand out from the crowd. While he does tell stories, most of the stories are really not very interesting. This is compounded by the fact that Leonardo is at best a mediocre storyteller. Even in the one story that has potential to be interesting, Leonardo's writing and performance fails to rise to the occasion.
"Nelson and Simone" purports to tell the story of a cross-oceanic unrequited love between sensual French author Simone de Beauvoir and American writer Nelson Algren. There's passion here, and romance. This story holds great dramatic potential. Under Leonardo's pen, this literary champagne turns to flat gingerale.
Leonardo sounds like the sort of folk artist who can become a big favourite in one or more local folk clubs, performing his songs to hometown fans who know both him and his music and can relate to the regional flavour of the songs. However, both the writing and performance, while technically well done, are pretty pedestrian and contain nothing to allow the songs to stand out as exceptional.
Were this a debut release by a beginning artist, I would tend to see potential in this release. The technical skills are present at a certain level and there's definitely room for growth in the areas of storytelling and presentation. Because this is already Leonardo's third release, I wonder if with his fourth release he can rise to the next level. It will be interesting to find out.
Those interested in learning more about Leonardo and the music on Urban Suite can find an interesting selection of information at his website.
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