Kyle Craft
Full Circle Nightmare
Release Date: Feb 2, 2018
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock
Record label: Sub Pop Records
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Album Review: Full Circle Nightmare by Kyle Craft
Fairly Good, Based on 5 Critics
Based on rating 4/5
Kyle Craft writes and sings with the full-blooded fervour of a singer-songwriter reveling in his just-erupting talent. While that rambunctious revelry can sometimes seem too breathless for its own good, there's a live-recorded vigour to the high-powered heartaches on the Louisiana-born, Portland-based outsider romantic's second album, a flourishing follow-up to the bargain-bin glam-slam melodramas of his 2016 debut, Dolls Of Highland. Metaphors flood out of Fever Dream Girl, Craft milking his nocturnal fixations for all they're worth and more.
Based on rating 7/10
Louisiana-born, Portland, OR-based troubadour Kyle Craft's second album, Full Circle Nightmare, is an entertaining and tremendously freewheeling record. Despite being just 28, Craft's songwriting is noticeably self-assured and beatnik; it plays like the musical incarnation of a Jack Kerouac novel, shifting from city to city in a variety of unsavoury situations. Whether it's being the amoral companion of a prostitute in "The Rager" or reveller on "Belmont (One Trick Pony)," Craft writes busy narratives that range from nonchalant ("Fever ….
Based on rating 7/10
Indie rocker Kyle Craft is only left of center in a contemporary context; his music and the way he delivers it are indebted to classic Southern rock and album rock acts like the Band, the Stones, and Bob Dylan. Less prominent but peering through it all lies David Bowie, who first inspired Craft to pick up a guitar as a teen. Though he did sneak out a collection of home-recorded covers of female singers in the interim (Girl Crazy), Full Circle Nightmare is the Louisiana native's official follow-up to his 2016 debut, Dolls of Highland.
Based on rating 4.1/10
Kyle Craft, it would seem, is someone to whom lyrics matter a great deal. "I hate the idea of conforming to shitty lyricism that happens nowadays," the 29-year-old, Portland-based songwriter said in a recent interview. "It's not everyone, but there is definitely a lower bar for what is considered good lyricism now." Citing Bob Dylan as an influence, he also noted that his second studio LP, Full Circle Nightmare, is "a little less scatterbrained" than his 2016 debut, Dolls of Highland.
Opinion: Excellent
Never short on rear view adherents, American Rock 'N' Roll has a relentless new standard bearer. Kyle Craft's second album, Full Circle Nightmare, carves his debut's demonic bayou glamour into a joyful, if repetitive, blend of the 20th Century's best derivations of the country-fried blues. Craft's ecstatic music is easily placed yet difficult to delineate.
'Full Circle Nightmare'
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