Skott Freedman, Some Company

Skott Freedman’s album Some Company falls into a category that I like to call "Sensitive Male Contemporary" -- earnest lyrics, expressing Freedman's inner feelings (mainly dealing with relationships), sung over solo piano background. He fits squarely into the musical terrain explored by such artists as Jim Brickman and Bruce Hornsby.

I'd never heard of Freedman until Some Company arrived on my desk, so I checked out his Web site to get some information on him. Freedman is a native of New Jersey, and a classically-trained pianist who won some piano competitions before leaving classical behind for contemporary songwriting. His bio states that his music "further develops his taste for dissonance", which is a quality I did not detect in large quantity here. At least, his music is no more dissonant than a lot of other contemporary romantic songwriting.

My expectations for listening were also shaped by the CD's liner notes, which consist of a couple of photos of Freedman and his song lyrics. What caught my eye here was the way the lyrics are printed: not in poetical form, with the verses and choruses clearly visible, but as blocks of text without punctuation or capitalization. Here's an example, from the album’s second and titular track, "Some Company":

what you would say if you found out today would really be your last would you try to bargain with god would you take the chance grab hold of the hands of your family and friends tell them all just what they meant would you know what to say would you know what to do when they stared at you wide-eyed and laughing saying hey are you crazy man….

This isn't just a stylistic gimmick. Freedman's songs actually sound like this: they begin with a bit of piano background, sometimes rhythmic and other times more impressionistic and "shimmering", followed by Freedman's singing in what can be described as a "stream of consciousness" style. It's very effective, and well-suited to the subject matter that dominates Freedman's lyrics.

His songs are focused on specific relationships, and many of them actually feel like drafts of rejected letters, perhaps, or one-half of a conversation between lovers (or at least very close friends). In nearly every song, Freedman addresses some unidentified "You," using the actions and attitudes of his "other" as a mirror to better reflect and contrast his own feelings; these seem to vacillate between optimism for the future and sad nostalgia for a past which didn’t develop the way he thought it would. In the song "Some Company," he relates an encounter with a homeless person:

Just the other day went walking with a friend in downtown boston where we saw a homeless man begging for spare change just trying to feed his kids I bent down to give a dime my friend just shook his head c'mon skott don't you know this guy’s just gonna go get himself all liquored up spent the night drinking away well I just don’t buy that line…what about the chance that this money makes it home that’s a truth some people never want to know…

always wanted a treehouse but didn't know how to build one was never too good at building anything but you could show me and I'd teach you how to ride that pony and together we could chase after all our childhood dreams…where's your smile gone it's not just you I've lost my own one but together I know that someday we're gonna get 'em back…

Freedman's songs are all individually effective, even if several of them are too long ("Treehouse" and "Walking Away" each approach seven minutes). The style on each is roughly the same; a kind of earnestness that becomes more penetrating by virtue of the ostinato piano backgrounds, which at times approach a kind of hypnotic quality. However, taken as a whole in the course of listening to the entire CD a sense of "sameness" begins to set in. There isn't much variance in tempo and, except for the CD’s best track -- the haunting ballad "Until That Time" -- Freedman doesn't experiment much with dynamics, so few of the songs have the sense of ebb and flow, of development, that keeps them from eventually sounding like their brethren.

Freedman has a pleasant baritone voice, and he's quite good at phrasing lyrics that are unwieldy and could easily trip up a musician of more conventional mind. I think he needs to take more chances with his voice, though; my impression is that he's a more convincing singer, more in touch with his material, when he extends into his upper register, which has a risky and raw character. This he does in his cover of the song "Walking In Memphis", but too rarely in the rest of the album. And in just a couple of spots, his voice is suddenly amplified with an electronic effect. This happens a handful of times in the course of the album, and each time I found it startling and distracting, not unlike a symphony concert where in the middle of a soft passage the timpani player drops his mallets to the floor. Odd electronic effects just don't enhance Freedman's minimalist, piano-and-vocal-only stylings here.

I enjoyed what Skott Freedman offered, and I suspect that if his future efforts challenge the listener more, he may be an artist to reckon with indeed.