Did Anyone Try to too Hard

Teddy Geiger had a great marketing plan; before his first album, Underage Thinking was ever released, he got himself on a re-accruing role on a new show, playing basically himself, a new singer-songwriter looking to break into the business. Unfortunately for Geiger, the show, Love Monkey, was quickly canceled after three shows, a good month before the album was even released.

When I first saw Geiger on Love Monkey, my first thoughts on his character were "Wayne is actually played by a singer, Teddy Geiger, basically a John Mayer rip-off. This is a problem considering not even John Mayer wants to bite his old style." Well after listening to his album, I realized I was wrong on that account, he doesn’t bite John Mayer, he actually more of a Gavin DeGraw clone with more of a piano driven, pseudo-soul sound whereas Mayer is more of a blues retread.

But the main different between DeGraw and Geiger is the songwriting. DeGraw, and Mayer for that matter, can write songs that people of all ages can relate to even if they were written about a certain time in his life. Geiger’s songs on the other hand are very Middle School which will most likely limit his fan base which could grow out of him within years. Nowhere is this more evident than the lamely title track where the sixteen year old dreams of an adult time thus proving the assessment that youth is waited on the young.

Another negative is his voice. Going for the blue-eyed soul like DeGraw, Geiger stretches his voice too far while reaching for notes which is okay for the opening track, These Walls, but it gets old quick and fails even worse when he goes into falsetto later on the album. When he does tone things back, the songs are much better like on Try Too Hard and A Million Years. Hopefully Geiger grows up like he hopes he does by the next time he starts another album.

Song to Download - Try Too Hard

Underage Thinking gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.