This Calamity- ‘I’ll Paint You A Picture If You Promise To Put It Up’ (17/06/2012– Self Released)

     From Plymouth, This Calamity, otherwise known as Martyn Crocker is a pop/alternative artist who began his career in September 2010. Influenced by likes of Dashboard Confessional, Death Cab for Cutie, Deftones and Weezer, This Calamity released his debut EP ‘Animals’ on the 7^th of November 2011 for free to make his fan base as vast as possible before the composition and release od ‘I’ll Paint You A Picture If You Promise To Put It Up’ on the 17^th of June this year.

     This Calamity’s first mini album, is an expansion and evolution of ‘Animals’ and retains the same, somewhat obscure compositional style. ‘I’ll Paint You A Picture’ gives the listener a taster of the rest of the album, as the begins gently and in a wonderful melodic manner, almost lulling the listener into a false sense of security. However when Martyn commences his vocal input, it almost disrupts the rhythm of the instrumental, as his voice projects a strong, distinctive British accent. His vocal style is similar to that of We Are The Ocean vocalist Dan Brown for the band’s acoustic work, yet This Calamity’s interesting use of sound effects and eerie piano. Despite being influenced by a number of artists and bands, This Calamity has managed to grasp his own sense of musical style and an solid blend of instruments.

  

Artwork: 'I'll Paint You A Picture If You Promise To Put It Up'

     ‘Moving Away’ conveys Martyn’s clear and unique sound, and decent female harmonies, but also reflects that he has not pin-pointed an audience with his choice of genres, which makes it difficult to comprehend who exactly his music targets. The track comes to a close with bird song, showing the unintimidating, yet general style This Calamity is reaching for. With a straightforward format of vocal and guitar for a period, ‘Bottle Rocket’ depicts how instrument focused the album is, particularly with the brass section. Although This Calamity cannot be a labelled as a straight up copy of other band or artist’s work, the mixture of genres he uses could become problematic.

    With its Blink-182 esque opening, ‘In Need of an Exit Strategy’ is wonderfully melodic and emotive, but is tainted by obscure, pointless screeching sounds towards the end. ‘Broken Lips’ illustrates This Calamity’s stunning vocal abilities, to the level of Ed Sheeran, however, his song writing abilities do not match up to Sheeran’s. Yet the haunting harmonies work brilliantly and ‘This Carousel Just Keeps on Turning’ amplifies Martyn’s compositional gifts, but unfortunately also highlights his lack of lyrical talent once again.

Image by Dom Moore

    ‘I’ll Paint You A Picture If You Promise To Put It Up’ portrays This Calamity’s progression from his first release, as well as his aspiration for uniqueness. However, his lack of specified genre or audience and unspecific lyrics outweigh the clever instrumentation and composition.  

2/5

Visit www.thiscalamity.com.uk to download This Calamity’s debut EP ‘Animals’ for free now!