he’s got a self released album I found on YouTube that I think I’d actually like quite a bit if it were given a little love, if it were taken to a producer and cleaned up. He’s got a couple albums that are pretty singer-songwriter-y, which aren’t mind blowing but which I like pretty well. He’s got his stuff that is very pop song, which is occasionally fun and also occasionally bizarrely uninteresting. He’s got his stuff which is symphonic and dramatic, which I tend to enjoy a lot but which doesn’t actually come up as much as I’d like (especially since often times when it does happen it’s on covers that I don’t care for, I feel like the effort is wasted on covers).
I’m of two minds with the pop stuff. I think it’s mostly pretty good, but I don’t like it as much as his symphonic stuff, and I don’t know that I even like it as much as his simple, airier, more singer-songwriter-y songs. Those are the songs that feel so much just like basic, kind of lifeless pop. They’re fun enough, they’re fine, but they occasionally feel utterly devoid of personality, they don’t have anything interesting in them. That’s very confusing and frustrating because Cody Fry is not devoid of personality, and even in other songs of a similar vibe, even in songs in the same album that has the boring songs, there will be songs that are interesting and dynamic. Some of those are still pop songs that are produced like pop songs, but that still have something to them that doesn’t feel dead inside, that makes them fun and engaging. It’s frustrating that he wouldn’t just, y’know, make all the songs good. Why have the dead songs when I know he could make the ones that are alive? Lame. It’s kinda a dumb complaint: why make bad, why no make good, why no make my way? But like, yeah, that is how I feel.
It bums me out because he peaks so high, and the way he peaks so high is with such a high level of craftsmanship and intention, and it happens enough that I feel like he could make stuff I like that much, all the time every time, and he just… doesn’t. He does it a handful of times, and the rest of everything he does is just a mix of different kinds of “pretty good but nothing to really write home about”. I can so easily imagine an epic Cody Fry album that feels like him, that’s all the things I like best about him explored throughout a full length album, and that imagined album slaps. Unfortunately, that imagined album doesn’t exist right now and I kinda suspect it won’t ever—Fry doesn’t seem to be quite as interested in the parts of him I love as I am, at least not to the exclusion of the parts I don’t think are all that special. I dunno, I guess we’ll see. I think for now I feel pretty good about an A-
Cody Fry complete, now listening to: George Michael
tunafruitsandwitch 