Instantly forgettable.
Twenty-three year old Landon Pigg does not in fact hail from London, UK, but from Nashville, Tennessee, USA. 'LP' is his third release, following 2002's 'Demonstration' on the Land On Music label and an EP entitled 'This Is A Pigg' earlier this year, on his current record label, RCA. His personal website is keen to stress how poetic and individual he is (because, for example, "he tends to get a nosebleed more often than most, but he likes it when life happens naturally") but sadly this CD does not live up to the hype.
'Can't Let Go' launches the album with a rather formulaic pop-rock track. Landon's vocals fail to ignite large amounts of excitement or have any edge, but carry the tune well. The song moves steadily along, employing that tried, trusted and tiresome quiet/loud patter but avoiding becoming needlessly loud until its closing sections. It's an inoffensive track, but not a very memorable one and fails to inspire the listener to anticipate great things in the remaining eleven tracks.
'Last Stop' and 'Just Like I Am' both begin with a slow beat and give the impression that a ballad is approaching, however they soon get louder and faster. In both tracks Landon's vocals are stronger than in the opening song and cover a greater range, but the overall feeling is that of nineties indie pop – Travis and U2 at their most bland. 'Eggshells' continues this theme, and by this time the guitar-heavy sound combined with relentless banging of drums and an almost total lack of tune begins to grate on the listener's nerves.
In 'Keep Looking Up', 'Perfectionist' and 'Sailed On' Landon makes his most obvious attempts at ballads, but both quickly flounder due to his basic mistakes of not expressing any emotion and writing formulaic lyrics blatantly penned to appeal to the teenage market, such as "Like a little locket hangs / Round your little neck so closely to your heart / So shall I be forever" ('Keep Looking Up') or "Only the moon and the stars in the sky did know / To cry for me /As I sailed on". 'Trickery' initially appears to be one of the album's stronger songs, with surprisingly entertaining lyrics such as "They say your life is like a yellow brick road / That's nice, mine's like a maze" and a slightly more original bassline than the majority of the songs here. Unfortunately it soon resorts to the type of chorus that would be called 'sing-along' if anyone might ever want to sing along to it (which seems unlikely in this case).
'Magnetism' is one of the better songs on the album, with a well-written and -delivered intro and a darker feel than most of Landon's tracks. It has more of a rock sound than an indie one, but is still radio friendly and rather poppy, gradually losing its darkness as it progresses. 'Greater Companion' has a sing-along quality and again is one of the album's stronger tracks, but remains entirely unoriginal in its tune and performance. It may not provoke anyone to switch off the radio, but it is unlikely to impress genuine music fans or prove itself to have lasting staying power.
Landon Pigg rounds off the album with 'Tin Man' and 'On The Other Side' – another pair of formulaic indie-pop offerings that fail to sound vastly different to any of the tracks here – in fact it's unlikely that any unfortunate purchaser of this album would be able to identify which track from it they are listening to (even after several continual plays), since they all sound the same. Landon unfortunately doesn't seem to have grasped the fact that varying the volume of a song and alternating between lighter and heavier sections does not equal interesting, or even good, music.
'LP' may appeal to younger listeners who have not yet refined their taste and are satiated by anything with guitars and faux-heartfelt lyrics about relationships going wrong. Anyone with more discerning tastes will find it nondescript and mediocre, as it offers nothing new or original, and fails to deliver even one memorable tune or set of well-written lyrics.