Joel Dobbins – Investment

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Joel Dobbins’ free online release Investment is almost astonishingly well produced. And Dobbins certainly has an ear for the grand, but this album is too epic for its own good.

From the first track Tears of Joy – an impressive sonic accomplishment – you can’t help but feel that Dobbins is walking a tightrope over mindless pop oblivion. And you can’t help but cover your eyes for fear that he won’t make it to the other side. He doesn’t make it. But Dobbins doesn’t die in the fall, either.

In Investment, at least, Dobbins comes across as a young man who seems to instinctively know that that good writing and catchy melodies are all that matter. But he hasn’t yet reconciled that truth with his amazing technical proficiency. Conserving the pop gadgetry for when he really needs it would do Investment wonders.

In the third track, Out of the Blue,  Joel Dobbins combines the slick studio instrumentation you might expect from a committee-written studio pop CD with indie-rock style staticy flair. But once the song is over, you’re still not sure whether it was a good idea.

Indeed, Dobbins seems trapped between a Green Day style protest of narcissism and the too-crisp pop sound he often tumbles into. It’s a conflict that leaves an unbridgeable gap between hip party favors like Life on Paper and the mostly unlistenable Out of the Blue.

What makes his inconsistency all the more frustrating is the brilliance of tracks like What’s Come Over Me, a tastefully understated sonic wonder.(Although it could lose a few notches on the vocal effects.) It’s no coincidence that Dobbins’ voice sounds best at the end of Selective Memory when the filters finally give it a rest and Does Heaven Have a Flag.

My numerous gripes aside, it’s undeniable that this album comes from the heart of a nifty lyricist.

“If I want a legacy worth leaving/ This is something that I must believe in/ Life is not a human right/ It’s simply
something borrowed and we’re running out of time/ How will you invest it?”

Dobbins asks in Question of Ownership, one of a number of Investment’s surprisingly adept new wave-style tracks.

Joel Dobbins’ “Investment” is a bit like like reading reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s high school English papers. The talent is there, but who is the demon over his shoulder telling him this is how it has to be done? Once he figures that out, a masterpiece seems almost certain.