Album Review - Tony Harnell - Cinematic

"Cinematic" is a surprisingly fantastic six song musical experience, given life and voice by Tony Harnell. It hits the sky like an exploding fireball and then goes dimmer upon escalating, soft and fading, leaving all the shades inbetween. Harnell's voice is golden and gorgeous and edged with grey, showing a dazzling emotional spectrum. It has its own life, mesmerizingly unique, splendid when left unattended in its flowing, opalesque luminescence. His high notes are stabbingly beautiful and painfully precise. They cut like the most sharpened knife, never wavering. His voice cuts, and it can make you bleed ecstasy.

A brush in bold shadows paints "Out From Under the Black Clouds", a ride that is in many ways, a stunning revelation. Here the music is serpentine twisting, darkly modern as the bleak bottom of those black clouds but breaks in the music reveal an unexpected simple bridge that shines as sweet and warm as the sun. It is the hitting bottom and then the climb back up that is so impressive. That feeling of lifting, as the heaviness is purged from the soul. Tight structures swirling in a ballad setting and tight vocal acrobatics characterize "The Show" while "One Way Ride" is slick but determined, a semi-pop track that is steadied by its rock roots.

Everything culminates in the flash of brilliance that is "Unholy" where the darkness is brought to breathing life, penned in a song that just wallows on the underbelly of despair. Here we discover poisoned passion, resignation to be shackled to the chains that bind you, simply because it is perhaps too fatally fantastic to break the bindings and let yourself to freedom. The lows are velvet smooth, black alluring and sensually seductive. Tony's voice is panther-like, stalking with predatory intensity. Then it is firecracker explosions of blinding vocals that leave you in sensory overload, breathless and gasping. "Unholy" is a song of brilliant proportions and one that easily makes you feel as if you have suffered through being devoured alive by venomous love. "Everyday I'm letting go, I lost myself that's all I know."

"Cinematic" (the song) holds its hand in a similar moodiness, though on a more epic, theatrical scale. This one breaks in with a piercing falsetto that is mostly mocking. There is false perfection on the outside, and the interior is broken and bleeding. Futile, depressing, aggravating sums up the struggle fashioned for the defiance in "I Don't Want Anything". "Keep talkin, I'm not listening, to the lies, I can't take anymore." A venting for frustration but in elegant acceptance to let it slide and keep persevering.

"Cinematic" becomes both an artistic piece with an eye for colour and emotion, and a musical accomplishment that roams far beyond its modest stance as mere "demo". Demo? You have to be kidding... If this is just a demo, then what would a full fledged and realized actual album be like? Helmed and materialized under the Harnell name? One can speculate with their head in the clouds and their hopes beyond the skylines, and maybe those contemplations will one day come true. As it is, "Cinematic" is near perfection, beautiful, poignant and as carefully crafted as anything you'll hear. Harnell's voice is unsurpassing spectacular and his six song solo EP has just become a must purchase.

Written by Alanna
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
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