Timothy Nelson & The Infidels - I Know This Now (05/07/2011)
Timothy Nelson is an extremely talented singer/songwriter from Perth, who with his equally talented band The Infidels and the very admirable age of 21 has pushed out his debut LP, I Know This Now. At 12 tracks running at just over 50 minutes this is no limp first attempt, no garage demo parading as an album, but should it have been?
Unfortunately right off the bat there seems too blatant a mould that the album is being pushed into. Meanwhile the obvious talent of the band just seems to splay around the edges. It’s like a closed door with a gorgeous array of tentacles squeezing their way through the edge of the frame. No doubt about it, there is a kraken in this album, it’s just hidden behind a safety screen marked “Make it Just Like Pet Sounds.” Now I don’t use that comparison lightly but unfortunately neither does Nelson and even on first play-through it’s an unavoidable target that he has set himself and as such the loudest thing on display.
There’s a fatal flaw in trying to mimic the Greatest Album of All Time, and that’s that you’re trying to mimic the greatest album of all time. Pet Sounds is a sublime record because it wasn’t borne out of any pretension or aspiration, it was just the Beach Boys making a Beach Boys album and it just happened to stop the whole world like a heart attack. It crushed the social landscape of the time in one whimsical swoop.
I mean can you define why that album makes every serial killer in the world weep uncontrollably and confess to his pillow? No and that’s the point. It could be a testament to Nelson’s age that he’s willing to stretch to the heights of his heroes right off the bat but that’s an error that all artists have to fall into before they run the opposite direction and find their own wings, it’s just a shame that an album came out of it instead of something more forgettable and forgivable. I believe Timothy Nelson will make an immaculate album one day, but this is not it, this is more like Kathy Freeman’s first false start.
Christian Gilbert
Unfortunately right off the bat there seems too blatant a mould that the album is being pushed into. Meanwhile the obvious talent of the band just seems to splay around the edges. It’s like a closed door with a gorgeous array of tentacles squeezing their way through the edge of the frame. No doubt about it, there is a kraken in this album, it’s just hidden behind a safety screen marked “Make it Just Like Pet Sounds.” Now I don’t use that comparison lightly but unfortunately neither does Nelson and even on first play-through it’s an unavoidable target that he has set himself and as such the loudest thing on display.
There’s a fatal flaw in trying to mimic the Greatest Album of All Time, and that’s that you’re trying to mimic the greatest album of all time. Pet Sounds is a sublime record because it wasn’t borne out of any pretension or aspiration, it was just the Beach Boys making a Beach Boys album and it just happened to stop the whole world like a heart attack. It crushed the social landscape of the time in one whimsical swoop.
I mean can you define why that album makes every serial killer in the world weep uncontrollably and confess to his pillow? No and that’s the point. It could be a testament to Nelson’s age that he’s willing to stretch to the heights of his heroes right off the bat but that’s an error that all artists have to fall into before they run the opposite direction and find their own wings, it’s just a shame that an album came out of it instead of something more forgettable and forgivable. I believe Timothy Nelson will make an immaculate album one day, but this is not it, this is more like Kathy Freeman’s first false start.
Christian Gilbert