“DD Review: Kyle Craft – Full Circle Nightmare.”

Score: 6/10

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Granted, the real “full circle nightmare” about this music is that it’s nightmarishly circular and retro back to like a cheesy Blues Brothers era of R&B (opener “Fever Dream Girl” is basically an exact replication of The Spencer Davis Group covering “96 Tears”).
Ok, seeing as Kyle Craft looks and sounds exactly like Ryan Adams (which wouldn’t weird me out so bad if his lyrics weren’t an exact mimicry of Adams too, a sort of overly dramatic dogmatizing of relationship problems like a male Fiona Apple), it’s safe to say he’s a fan of him. Yeah, this is basically a Ryan Adams album, one plagued by an almost awe-inspiring lack of stylistic variety (that sort of vaudeville co**-rock I mentioned before), but luckily, not too much like actual sexual moaning, and way less inter-song transitional awkwardness than Prisoner offered.
Craft comes in on “Heartbreak Junky” sounding like a sort of obnoxiously casanova-like grandpa, like somebody whose shtick is being a lady’s man, no matter the results of that. The lyrics remain hopelessly retro, even harking to J. Geils in a sense with the line “I was the cheap ad / You were the centerfold”. (I’m not even lying: Craft after that makes mention of wanting to “go to Carolina,” or something… this thing is literally playing like some I Love the ’70s compilation album.) Craft talks about “rambling home” (Allman Brothers), but I don’t believe even half of what this goof ball says. He’s a showman.
Full Circle Nightmare will appeal to, well, ME, when I want some goopy shmear to play at work which will stymy anybody from having any actual thoughts. It’s definitely not the most poorly produced album of all time: the drums are thick and kicking, there are refreshing Elton John-type piano rolls, and… oh, it’s produced by a dude from The Decemberists, Chris Funk. Wow, this is way more funk than they ever had, I’ll give ‘em that.
I must admit that the song title “Fake Magic Angel” intrigued me right when I first saw it (although now I see with greater lucidity that all this fu**face’s songs basically consist of complaining about some bit** in some right or another) and indeed this track actually does offer up some TENSION and some climax, being very much in the like stylistic vein of Full Circle Nightmare’s remainder to the tune of goopy R&B big cheese, if you will.
By the closeur “Gold Calf Moan” I’m so sick of this dude’s melody-drama that I think I’d rather hear like a goat grunting into a microphone for 40 minutes.