Jeff Tuohy reviewed
Jeff Tuohy
Breaking Down The Silence
(self-released)
This New York-based singer-songwriter dodges the sort of vacant hipster tags that plague his Big Apple contemporaries, rising out of the frat-rock scene.
Appearing: January 27th at Joe’s in Chicago.
The least attractive part of Jeff Tuohy is the sound he brings — textbook acoustic rock from fraternity row — though his attachment to some of the banalities of rock ‘n’ roll, a la the drum solo (see “Fields Of Grey”), actually proves quite endearing. Tuohy is nothing if not out to call attention to his mic, which is why he sounds so comfortable fretting about a “high-class bitch” on “Brandy,” or the way he gracelessly stumbles over himself in “Lindsey’s Song,” absolutely determined to keep his rhyme scheme. Occasionally he hits upon a nugget (“I’ll give you my salvation for one taste of your sin”), more often he doesn’t (“Everyday I fear I’m growing older”) and after breaking down the silence he still leaves a void.
— Steve Forstneger
