It didn't take me too long to realise that the track titles of Give You A Reason To Cry flowed into each other like a poem. In fact, it took me more time to notice the description on the Bandcamp page that said as much. I always enjoy a gimmick like that, although I wonder how many of the tracks were made to fit the titles versus tracks that were produced and then alloted a title. Anyway, for context I think it would be worth outlying the track titles here because they sell a specific lens that I think Timeless Interval would like us to view this album through:
I Will Care For You / Nobody Else Can Do It / I Love You But / I Don't Like You / I Gave You Everything / I Can Take It All Away / Don't Hang Up On Me / I Can't Help You / Have A Nice Life / I Don't Care About You / I Don't Love You Anymore / Just Hang Up / Give You A Reason To Cry
There's obviously a vibe there. Not just of a relationship turned sour, but a sort of dark childishness, leading even into toxicity. And I think that juxtoposition of playful, childlike sounds with dark and discordant undertones are what make this album tick. This is apparent in I Will Care For You, which is whimsical on the surface but has a slight sickly quality to it that prevents it from sitting comfortably. The same is true for I Love You But, which sounds quite lovely in its opening minutes but starts to literally wobble as the track progresses.
Then there are the tracks that have dark titles and are typically darker in tone, like I Don't Like You. And by dark, I mostly mean there's a deeper and more prominent bass part giving everything a a slightly more menacing tone.
Where I think the album doesn't quite sit right for me is not in any individual track, but listening to the album as a whole. Several of the tracks, possibly all of them, are focused around four chord eight bar loops that layer on top of each other and then strip layers away and then layer them back up again. I think this is an easy trap to fall into with electronic music as sequencers push composers towards these kinds of structures, but as a result the album started to feel quite repetitive and boring by the end.
Like I say, that's not the fault of any individual track, and there is at least Don't Hang Up On Me, a really nice piano piece, to break things up a little. I also particularly enjoyed I Can't Help You, with its funky bass riff and plinky plonky lead synth, that builds in a really satisfying way.
Ultimately this feels like an album that perhaps started with the concept first and maybe bit off a little more than it could chew. It's still a decent listen, but I can't help but feel if the poem had been ten lines instead of thirteen I would have gotten a little more out of it.