Album Review: Greg Attonito - Natural Disaster EP

The six songs on this EP represent Bouncing Souls frontman Greg Attonito’s first recorded solo output. In what is becoming an increasingly common move, he has temporarily left his band mates behind to make an acoustic guitar driven EP. However, unlike many of those contemporaries, Attonito has opted for a much more laid back record in the vein of Beach Boys luminaire, Brian Wilson.

‘Natural Disaster’ opens with the uniquely instrumented ‘How Many Songs’. Backed by Eastern sounding strings and vocal noises, the melody is haunting but the lyrics are sincere, even quaint. Attonito’s voice isn’t the strongest, but those that are familiar with his day job, will be surprised at how well it fits into these tracks.

The remainder of the EP is less experimental in its sound, reverting to a much more standard guitar-based singer-songwriter schtick. Attonito once again displays a wonderful grasp of language in the beautifully worded ‘Volcano.' Sounding like the majority of the ‘Juno Soundtrack’, the addition of some old-time trumpet to the track is a nice touch.

Unfortunately once the additional instrumentation is pushed into the background the songs suffer, reaching an all-time low on the cringe-inducing ‘Sexiest Girl’. It’s unclear whether the Bouncing Souls man fancies himself as the successor to Prince or is just unaware of how cheesy the lyrics are to this song.

The album does rise out of the doldrums on final track ‘Teardrops’, when Greg is joined by the beautiful vocals of his wife Shanti Watergate. It’s laced with genuine heartfelt emotion, and is a genuinely nice finish to an average EP.

Attonito sings that he wants to “break the boundary of rock and roll” on closing track ‘Teardrops.’ Though he doesn’t come close to doing that on ‘Natural Disaster’ there are a few good songs on it, that suggest, should he want to, he could step away from the Souls and carve a career on his own.

3/5

‘Natural Disaster’ by Greg Attonito is available from 12th July on Chunksaah Records.

Greg Attonito on Facebook, and MySpace.

Dan Issitt