While failed relationships aren’t known for offering consolation prizes, singer-songwriter Byron Zanos managed to get an album’s worth of material out of his. Who knew emotional turmoil could sound so good?
Zanos dissects the decline on his debut, Somewhere in the Middle, a pop-rock affair that spares us a downer of a record with the help of his evocative voice — smooth and limber, masculine yet vulnerable, his falsetto always at the ready. If not for the lyrical content, you’d almost think he was trying to woo the girl.
Although Zanos lyrically plumbs the billowing tension, his flypaper-catchy melodies provide an uplifting counterpoint. Even when he chides his soon-to-be-ex for always expecting things to be easy, he glides over the lines with toe-tapping finesse rather than bitter angst or moping.
Somewhere in the Middle was recorded as a band project, but Zanos’s strong core rhythmic sensibilities anchor the mix. One can hear his talents as a solo performer (he’s been calibrating his game on the college circuit) who knows how use his voice to bend sheets of shapely melodies around the percussive edges of his acoustic guitar.
Electric guitarist/producer Drew Yowell and engineer Daegal Bennett work to Zanos’s strengths, building supportively around his polished acoustic song structures and vocals instead of swallowing them with over-instrumentation. Because the songs themselves are sturdy and nuanced, electric guitar, bass, and drums are applied in a way that adds power, dimension, and a little more rock and roll punch to his music.
Tunes like “Pandora’s Box” spring to life with fat, groovy syncopation. Other uptempo songs, like the perky rocker, “Sleeping Sally”, contrast the darker thematic undercurrent with the driving, polyrhythmic energy of a Dave Matthews tune. On the more detectably melancholy “Secrets and Lies”, Zanos et al even manage to pull off the string-arrangement-clad Big Ballad, heightening the drama without overinflating the song with artificial sentiment.
Zanos still has a little work ahead of him if he wants to break out of the thicket of talented singer-songwriters out there. But he’s well on his way, and it may only take him one more girlfriend to get there.
— Jim Kirlin
While failed relationships aren’t known for offering consolation prizes, singer-songwriter Byron Zanos managed to get an album’s worth of material out of his. Who knew emotional turmoil could sound so good?