Jeffrey Dallet’s album, Abnormal Oddities, is more than just a regular folk album. It has a mixture of pop, Americana and hard rock, but also features lyrics of regret, pain, economic hardship, religious imagery, love and nostalgia. It’s an album that is raw with emotions and worth listening to nearly every song it has.
Blind Love In Vain is an epic six-minute track that starts off the album with its fast pace music of heavy drums, booming harmonicas, loud guitars and powerful vocals. Its lyrics will get you ready for the rest of album, with its references of pained loves, use of religion and the concept of moving forward. For a first song, it sets the mood just right for what is up ahead.
The second track of the album is Someday. Rather than being a six-minute epic of Rock and Folk, combining the lyrics of pain and regret like its predecessor, Someday is a two-minute and half love song, accompanied with long violin bridges, beautiful harmonic sounds and of course, the soft strums of the acoustic guitar. We get more of an insight of whom Dallet is; we get to see more of his intimate and personal side.
Up next is Bye Bye Middle Class Blues. As you can tell by its title, the song is about the struggles of the middle class and overall its shrinkage. Its Dylanesque lyrical content, “Kick ass middle class 20 for a movie pass, overpriced sufficed raped by the price of gas. No care health care too much to share†goes up against upbeat music, which at times might be jarring for the listener. Nonetheless, it is a powerhouse track of the economic struggles and social injustice among the middle class.
Dead and Lonely is the opposite of Someday, rather than being a love song, confessing your feeling to your partner, Dead and Lonely is a lamenting break up song. Similar to Bye Bye Middle Class Blues, the music and its lyrics are in the opposite spectrum of emotions, as the music is upbeat and even cheerful to a certain extent, the lyrics themselves are cynical, full of grief and pain and even have references to almost horrifying religious imagery.
My Old Record Store is a throwback to the childhood of Dallet. A mixture of pop and rock, My Old Record Store reflects on the nostalgia in all of us as we go back to the days of our youth, returning to the music that made us who we are today. With powerful vocals and lighthearted instruments, it’s a song that will no doubt brighten your day.
Odd Ball Blues is the finale of Abnormal Oddities and ends the album with epic portions. Similar to the previous songs, Odd Ball Blues, is a combination of rock and folk, with hard drumbeats and fiery electric guitars. It features lyrics of loss, pain, bad breakups and a “take-that†against people of wealth and even hipsters. Basically, it’s Abnormal Oddities compressed and end it with a bang.
Abnormal Oddities is anything but an abnormal oddity, it’s a novel album that contains powerful lyrics that reflect on the economic hardship of Americans and their decaying cities in songs such as Dear Dayton, OH and Bye Bye Middle Class Blues. Whether you are a fan of folk rock or not, give Abnormal Oddities a listen, it has something for everyone.
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