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Waging War On Myself A Beautiful Silence  Hailing from Marquette, Michigan, James Faccio is the brains, body and heart of A Beautiful Silence. With three albums already under his belt, Waging War On Myself taps into present-day feelings of heartbreak, isolation, and relationship drama in general. “3:30 Of A.D.D.” makes for a curious introduction to Faccio’s world, its techno/synthpop rhythms and repeated refrains of “gonna make you sweat, girl” creating a hypnotic, locked groove ready for the dance floor. However, this song doesn’t necessarily prepare you for the selections to come. If anything, it reveals other influences that make up a part of Faccio’s musical spectrum. This album is largely based around a melodic pop structure, which results in choruses and lyrics that stay with you long after the CD has concluded. The words are sung with an emotive longing and urgency that is naked and unashamed. Play “Give Me A Chance” for an example of this: the propulsive instrumentation pushes Faccio’s attempts to win another’s affections (“He doesn’t love you like I do...”). Even on a potentially silly song like “Girlfriend On Facebook,” you get the sense that the first-person account of this online relationship has some sort of emotional investment. Even so, he still asks himself the same question that many others within the social media phenomenon have asked themselves: “Why, oh why...why do I do these things?” One of the strongest compositions on the album is “You Put The Stars To Shame.” It’s head-over-heels admiration set to light drum machine pulsations and acoustic guitar accents. “The Good Life” is equally effective, its downtrodden everyman musings cradled by orchestra swells and riding a rhythm track that wouldn’t sound out of place on the latest club banging hip-hop track. However, Faccio is able to make this work within a pop context as he sings, “I wanna hear my song on the radio / I wanna see my face on a TV show / I want a taste of the good life.” With songs this memorable and a fierce DIY determination, there’s no reason to believe that such an existence is out of his reach.
Jason Randall Smith 2009-01-30
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