As a musical artist, naming your album is an important task, akin to naming your child. This is the first impression the musical community is going to have of your work, long before they hear the first set of chords, so it should come as no surprise when many acts give their LPs flashy titles or names that are more abstract than a Jackson Pollack painting. It helps give your work a unique identity right off the bat. Perhaps that's what makes the simple, declarative nature of It Was Easy, the title of the debut album from D.C. one-man indie band Title Tracks, ironically stand out. It's so nondescriptive—and that nondescriptive quality ends up saying more about the album than any abstract reference ever could.
This characterless quality leads to a versatility one has to imagine was completely unintentional and accidental on the part of Title Tracks mastermind John Davis. Almost any one of these songs could be used as a theme song for a TV show set in some indeterminable time period. Throw Joe Cocker and the Rembrandts aside, both ""The Wonder Years"" and ""Friends"" could have worked with ""Steady Love"" as their, ahem, title track. Despite the claim Davis makes in ""Hello There"" that ""We were our dreams / for most of the 1970s,"" his dreams could just as easily involve Tamagotchis and Sinbad as much as the age of Gerald Ford. Title Tracks has coined the sound of the generic previous generation.
Part of this seeming utility man quality of It Was Easy is because of the album's lyrical and musical dichotomy, as Davis' brand of power-infused indie pop often tends to undermine his negativity-tinged words. In ""Found Out,"" Davis may claim that ""Your oldest hopes aren't the only thing you've lost,"" but it's hard to take him seriously when mirth emanates from every strum of his guitar. Delving even further into the land of milk and honey, ""Every Little Bit Hurts"" may be the most peppy song about a depressing topic since Third Eye Blind brainwashed all of Generation X into humming along to meth-head lyrics. Once again, it's tough to believe somebody who claims ""Life is not a dream to me / It's a sour melody"" when he keeps flailing around with a tambourine like a Parisian gypsy.
But despite the cognitive dissidence they create, these tracks are at least enjoyably active. The same cannot be said for Davis' cover efforts, particularly his take on Bruce Springsteen's ""Tougher Than the Rest,"" which lacks the conviction of the Springsteen original and instead makes Davis seem like ""that guy"" at a party who brought his guitar in an attempt to woo potential bed mates.
But even with these missteps, It Was Easy still makes for a pretty enjoyable casual listen. In particular, songs like ""No Girl"" would be great background music for a day at the beach, thanks in part to some great guest vocals from Camera Obscura's Tracyanne Campbell.
With It Was Easy, Davis has created an album that singularly exists only for a very short period of time, from the point it enters your ear canal to when it floats through your temporal lobes. Beyond that the brain doesn't process much of It Was Easy into memory. Title Tracks' debut is as easy to forget as it is easy to listen to, and it's hardly an album people are going to be talking about a year, let alone a week from now. But while it lasts, Title Tracks' sound is perfectly agreeable, and any act that slides some positivity past the ear drum deserves a listen, even if it is incidental.
