Tim Ten Yen - Everything Beautiful Reminds Me Of You
‘Karaoke Pop’ is the genre that Tim Ten Yen has coined for himself, fortunately he’s not drunkenly singing along to ‘80s rock songs; rather he’s constructed himself a pleasant, if not particularly exciting collection of nicely textured piano pop.
Unfortunately much of ‘Everything Beautiful Reminds Me Of You’ sounds pretty much alike, despite all of the musical differences in the tracks. Whilst this may have been intended to serve as achieving some sort of cohesion to the songs, by the end of the album you’ve pretty much absorbed Tim Ten Yen’s style and despite some of the clever textures and often great instrumentation you find your attention wandering.
So let’s have some examples of exactly what it is that this suited and styled Englishman does then. ‘The Song Applies To You’ sounds like a non-bleepy soundtrack to an old Super Mario game, but with added stings. ‘M.O.R.’ unfortunately isn’t a cover of the Blur classic, but is instead ELO pop with glockenspiels and a Brian May style guitar solo. ‘Bear And The Fox’ is to all intents and purposes a children’s song: “Up in the mountains there’s a fox/ And there’s a bear/ that doesn’t care” go the lyrics, it’s not a bad song, but you get the feeling that like the rest of the songs on the record they’d sound better out of the context of this collection, possibly in the case of this example on a compilation aimed at children.
Midways through we’re treated to an interlude, in the form of ‘Radio Nowhere’. It’s length is slightly jarring, at only a minute and 14 it’s gone well before it’s outstayed its welcome. All vaguely dancey keyboards buried low in the mix, choppy guitar and repetitive vocals. It feels like driving through nowhere at night, presumably what Mr Yen intended - Hot Chip would kill to write this. Other than this the high points on the record come with the closing pair ‘Mountain Country’ and ‘Your Love’, the former is Tim Ten Yen perfecting his formula and the latter sounds like Mika going soul.
Overall whilst it’s rather samey it’s hard to get riled about this album. Tim Ten Yen has a great soothingly British voice and is capable of writing some great songs and complimenting them with some great sounds and textures. Any of these songs would sound fantastic buried on a mixtape but together they just sound too similar. Doubtlessly this album will have its fans and rightly so, but for casual listeners it’s probably best to have a listen online and pick your favourites to download (legally of course) rather than taking the plunge. Where he goes from here will be worth keeping an eye on.
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