Here are four quick reasons why Jim Boggia deserves to be on your musical radar screen: 1) He\'s got a great voice - raspy and expressive and well-suited for a number of styles, similar to Mike Viola\'s that way, 2) He\'s got a firm grasp of pop vernacular - Boggia obviously has spent a lifetime listening to lots of music and absorbing plenty of it - there are subtle reference points in the music, as well as in the liner notes, 3) He\'s smart - I know, not usually a pop requisite, but always a nice bonus - Boggia often goes outside himself to explore larger issues in his lyrics and displays an admirable vocabulary while doing so, 4) He\'s good - these are songs that grow on you the more you listen, true singer/songwriter quality pop product - sure it\'s not perfect, but Boggia displays a lot of growth and maturity in this latest collection, entitled Safe In Sound.
Through Michael Penn and Aimee Mann, Boggia made acquaintance with Julian Coryell and Joe Zook, who produced this new album. While Boggia adeptly handles guitar and a number of other instruments here, he also surrounds himself with several impressive musicians, including Julian Coryell on a variety of instruments, Butch (from Eels) on drums, Mike Frank on various and sundry keyboards, and Justin Meldal-Johnson (Beck) on bass.
The CD kicks off with \"Shine,\" a song co-written with Aimee Mann that serves as balladic ode and lament to those of us stuck in the compromised prison that is the workweek: \"Drive / Watch the streets become alive / filled with all the souls who, just like you, are heading to their job / The part of every day that\'s robbed / Filled with all the things we have to do.
\" The song offers optimism, proclaiming that \"like the day, you\'re going to shine.
\"Boggia is an optimist, something very much in evidence in his more upbeat \"Live the Proof\" (co-written with producer Julian Coryell). Here Boggia preaches a sermon of self-actualization, wherein we create our circumstance, beginning the world anew with thoughts and dreams set free into a world where problems are rectified through choices applied. It\'s a refreshing message of hope, conveyed in concise and clever words: \"Let\'s begin with a fact / Science tells us there\'s a pact made between each action / and something that reacts / Things that seem out of range all obey a law of change / Put thoughts into motion / watch things rearrange.
\"Personally, I like Boggia best as quiet balladeer, using that compelling voice to draw you into some more intimate song\'s confession. One such example would be \"Final Word,\" an astute and lovely musical summation of a multi-year relationship gone bad. Jim McGorman adds some nice keyboard touches here, as does Mike Frank on the Hammond organ.
Another such example of confessional ballad would be \"Show My Face Around,\" the song from which the album\'s title is derived. The confession here is that Boggia is something of a social recluse, having grown up in an isolated environment. At birth, he was declared legally blind in his left eye and over the years his right eye\'s strength has diminished. Perhaps this explains his heightened sense of hearing - and his finding refuge in the world of music from an early age. The song explains his public discomfiture - and his preference to \"just crawl back in my world of sound,\" finding safe haven there. There\'s a whole middle bridge of family recordings spliced into the song that fades into a reprise - and while this is fascinating, perhaps it could have been edited just a bit (the total song clocks in at over five minutes).
Boggia displays this same fondness for fadeouts and reprises on \"Where\'s The Party?\" Again, his raspy vocals are the centerpiece of a wonderful musical depiction of a star whose party life is somewhat out of control: \"A lot of us would rather play at rock star than to work to be one / A lot of talent wasted getting wasted, then just wasting time.
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