There's a definite fear factor involved when I open up a package from Splendid HQ and a bunch of self-released CDs with ink-jet labels and cracked jewel boxes come tumbling out. Sometimes they're absolutely impossible or psychically painful to listen to (not that more conventional CDs aren't often impossible to listen to...). Sometimes they just don't play (damn blue-backed CDRs!). But sometimes they're really great, which is why we listen to every last one of them, even if there's a big picture of a hobbit in a cape with bloody fangs and lightning bolts coming out of its head on the cover.

The Silent Type's self-released/titled CD was already ahead of the pack when it came tumbling out of the express mail package -- the CD booklet looks like it was actually printed, as was the CD label itself. There's nothing like a cruddy stick-on CD label that gets stuck in your CD player to sour you on a disc! There are no hobbits, blood or capes on the cover; there's the silhouette of a strange, pitchfork-handed humanoid, but it's pretty cool looking.

So I was already pretty into this disc even before listening to it (if you haven't noticed yet, I get a bit hung up on packaging...). And now that I've listend to it about 72 times, I'm still really into it! The band refers to these eight songs as "home-recorded demos", but they sound great, the recording is clean and the levels are good.

The songs are mostly just acoustic guitar and voice, although "A Nightmare I've Had Lately" sports some goofy analog synth noodling, "Phone a Friend" has some nice Regis Philbin and Dick van Dyke samples on it, and a robot drum machine makes an appearance on "Companion Piece". As you may have guessed from the titles, which also include "Last but Certainly Least" and "The Years Since You Left Me", there's a certain angstiness to these songs. But it's creative, interesting angst, with fine lyrics, sweet melodies and very nice boy singing.

"Mix Tape", with its sad, uncertain lyrics, brings me back to a doomed long-distance college romance. The melody in "Last but Certainly Least" has stuck with me for days now. The double-tracked vocals verge on the melodramatic, but combined with some nice acoustic guitar picking and good lyrics they end up as sweet rather than pretentious. "Once, we were on the same page, just in different books..." says "Companion Piece". That made me smile. "The Years Since You Left Me" will feel just right to anyone who still has gaping holes in his/her heart from an ongoing series of fatally-flawed relationships:

The years since you left me I've spent cataloguing your faults...just to see how you've grown
Your list came up empty, so I tooke the privilege of copying mine onto yours.

I like this disc a lot. It's sincere without being dopey or embarrassing, it has thoughtful, interesting lyrics and the singing and guitar playing are very nice. While these songs are not breaking any new ground or pushing the singer/songwriter envelope in any way, they are just plain good songs, which is quite an accomplishment in itself. If this is The Silent Type's demo, I can't wait to hear what the real thing will sound like.