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Article: Local musician gets high-tech backup on CD
By Lawrence Specker [email protected] Friday, June 24, 2005
"Sleeper Hit," the debut CD from local act Robah, unfolds before the listener as an intriguing and appealing experiment. The same seems likely to be true of Robah's show Saturday night at Satori Coffee, which serves as a local premiere of sorts. Robah is not a band as such. It's the alter ego of Robbie Morgan, who has leveraged limited experience as a singer-songwriter into a sophisticated self-produced album. Morgan, 22, says his background as a public performer consists of entertaining at friends' parties and taking the stage at a few open-mic nights. Yet "Sleeper Hit" is a confident and mostly mature work, with a sound that drapes big, bold progressive-rock soundscapes behind acoustic guitar and catchy alternative pop lyrics. The juxtaposition of these computer generated, almost industrial backgrounds with organic melodies and personal messages calls to mind some immediate comparisons, such as the English trio Doves. Morgan himself is upfront about being a fan of Radiohead, but thinks The Beatles are just as obvious an influence on what he does. "I try and grab from any and everything," he said. But he's got his own sound going. Better yet, he's remarkably unpretentious about it. Discussing music with this many progressive cues, you'd expect a certain highbrow tone. But when asked, for example, why much of the album's rhythmic content comes from computer-processed loops that seem to owe little to conventional percussion, his answer is direct: "I don't play drums." And that brings us closer to the strange dimension of experimental excitement underneath "Sleeper Hit." Morgan says he forged out in this direction without even the full range of equipment you'd expect of an ambitious home-studio geek. Apple's GarageBand software was his main tool. "A lot of people have been weirded out by the fact that I did the whole thing on a Mac," he said. "I'm pretty new at it. ... A lot of this stuff, it just kind of happened." As distinctive as the arrangements are, they'd be futile if Morgan didn't write memorable songs, but he does. "Niko the Therapist" has a bent quality that makes it particularly ear-catching: "I see Niko the therapist/ Every time I have a problem/ He gives me just what I need yeah/ A bit of crying then he says/ "Asphyxiation will solve everything... " But even on a straightforward love song, such as "Mary Jane," Morgan shows the ability to be dreamy without being dopey. The vocals do reflect a relative lack of performing experience. That's not to say they're weak, only that they're tinged by the reserved quality of a vocalist who has yet to weather a full measure of stage time good and bad. Aside from that, Morgan has a fine voice and stays within his limits. Morgan says that when it comes to replicating the album's sound live, Saturday's show will test the waters without committing fully. For most of the show he'll stick to familiar singer-songwriter formats, accompanying himself on guitar and keyboard. But for perhaps a quarter of the performance he will use programmed backing tracks that'll bring him closer to what we hear on "Sleeper Hit." And if you yourself would like to test the waters, several tracks can be heard online at www.myspace.com/robah. Morgan says the album will be sold at Robah shows, and by early July should be available through www.cdbaby.com.
