Beach Sloth

                Nick Willard is a versatile artist. In this collection he does a little bit of everything. Alone with guitar, rap, full band, indie rock, even electro Nick covers all bases with this collection of 10 songs ranging from 2 to four minutes. The pop emphasis is loud and clear. Fidelity, that’s a bit more of a mixed bag. The gamut ranges from Sebadoh levels of fidelity (on ‘there’s a song) to actual full-fledged quality (on ‘Casually Slow’). Whatever the range there is a certain level of humor in each song that binds them together. 

                ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’ has the rawest of a bedroom recording. A synthesizer gurgles on as Nick sings with guitar. It feels like a one-man band, which may or may not be the truth. ‘You and I (cover)’ is rather sweet in how it goes about its business. Here Nick is joined by another person giving it the sense of a happy campfire song. After that comes the most polished song in the whole collection, ‘A Little Like You’. Here it sounds crystal clear, or as clear as it is going to get. Nick sounds surrounded by friends. ‘Grind Some Nuggets’ is a song about McDonalds Chicken McNuggets. Apparently he enjoys grinding nuggets into fine pastes and consuming them. 

                ‘Occupy’ shows a nice picture of a Manhattan-bound subway as it describes his anger. The collection ends with an instrumental synthesizer track ‘atakeonaplay’. This is an unusual collection. However it does work quite nicely together. Hopefully Nick will continue doing this for the foreseeable future.