The very title
Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! swaggers in a fashion that's nearly boastful: it sends a signal that the Nashville-based singer/songwriter/guitarist
Aaron Lee Tasjan isn't bashful about his idiosyncratic talents. The bragging is warranted.
Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! is a clever, heartfelt pop record steeped in
Jeff Lynne's golden era as a producer -- think of the bejeweled surfaces of
Tom Petty's
Full Moon Fever and
Traveling Wilburys, Vol .1 -- and beating to a vulnerable, human heart.
Tasjan's melodies are so bold that it may take a moment for his sly, subversive nature to catch hold. All the nods to classic guitar pop give
Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! a mildly retro air, yet the album is thoroughly modern in its sensibility.
Tasjan sings about breaking up with his boyfriend to date his girlfriend on "Up All Night," litters "Feminine Walk" with puns and gender-bending winks, and celebrates all the art-punks on "Dada Bois," a spacy tower of sound that sends the album into the stratosphere in its final stretch. Usually, the rhythms are a bit jauntier than "Dada Bois" or the stately closer "Got What I Wanted," yet even when it rolls to an infectious beat, the mood of
Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! is mellow.
Tasjan digs within his songs, teasing out their meanings and finding multi-colored hues to their melodies, his leisurely pace creating a nice dreamy quality.
Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! is an album that invites -- and benefits from -- full immersion, as it has its own odd, alluring flow. The nods to the past only serve to indicate how thoroughly
Tasjan has absorbed
Petty and
Lynne, finding a way to spin universal pop into something personal and poignant. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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