Don’t Stop Doing What You Believe In

One crime against humanity two years ago is how the general public ignored one of the catchiest songs in recent years with Free by Donavon Frankenreiter. For most people, sadly they just thought it was written for a car commercial. Granted I’m as much to blame as I overlooked his album. But that isn’t the case the second time around as I gave a listen to his follow up Move by Yourself. This time around he’s no longer on fellow surfer tuned musician Jack Johnson’s Brushfire label and goes with more of a seventies vibe.

The album starts of with the one two punch of the title track and The Way it Is. Move by Yourself is a funky dance track with keyboards that sound right off the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack, and I don’t mean that in a bad way because Donavan’s laid-back silky vocal compliment the track. The Way It Is may slow it down just a slight, but the keyboards will still be able to keep you moving. Either song would do well to get any party started this summer.

Unfortunately when Donavon slows things down real slow starting with By Your Side, the songs lose the intensity of the upbeat tracks and are too mellow to the point they almost put you to sleep. This is most noticeable on Fool, a long jam, that may play a lot better live, under the stars at a concert, but on an album, I kept looking to see when it would end. Things get back on track at the end when Donavon bring some gospel singers to help him out on All Around Us and he also finally masters the slower song when he closes the album with the most simplistic song on the album, Beautiful Day. And no, it’s not a U2 cover.

Song to Download - Move by Yourself

Move by Yourself gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.