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Tag: T-Plan A EP

T-Plan A EP

t-reviewBand Name: T
Album Name: Plan A EP
Best element: Unique Americana voice
Genre: Americana (Pop/Rock/Alt-country)
Website: www.Ttheband.com
Label name: New Sheriff Creative Enterprises www.newsheriff.net
Band e-mail: Ttheband@newsheriff.net

Listening to T’s Plan A EP is a little bit like listening to Counting Crows’ [u/”>August and Everything After for the first time. A listener knows that he wants to tell someone about this amazing noise that he’s heard, but he doesn’t know how to describe it.

The biggest problem for spreading both T and Counting Crows is that it’s tough to talk about. Is it pop? Well, it sounds like pop sometimes, and it has pop song structures, but it feels like and injustice to call these emotive songs simply “pop”. Is it alt-country? No, definitely not- there’s the occasional steel guitar accents, and some could find the country inflections in the vocals if they listened closely, but this is not Jayhawks territory. Is it rock? By virtue of not being any of the other two, it should be rock, but it really isn’t- it never gets that hard or that loud or that full of attitude. It’s the genre that is a compilation of all these: Americana, a distinctly earthy, distinctly American, and distinctly unique sound.

And T’s excellent at it. The vocals are plaintive, striking, and emotionally charged in a way that no emo band will ever understand (although Adam Duritz does). The soft, jangly guitars and punchy, yet concise drumming come together nicely below these emotive vocals to form a spacious, inviting backdrop. The keys finish off this sound by playing with subtle, non-piano effects instead of overt key noises, which in turn meshes all the parts together. The lyrics are stellar as well- although not printed, one can still catch a pretty deep meaning from the lyrics to these three songs. The comparisons to Counting Crows are undeniable throughout, but somehow, it feels different as well.

Overall, T took a page out of the Counting Crows Americana textbook, rewrote it, and sent it back out as a new product. Just like that’s not plagiarism in English, rewriting the pattern isn’t plagiarism in music, as T has established itself as a unique voice that demands to be heard from this three-song EP.

-Stephen Carradini