Album Notes: “Painfully Mainstream”

Title: Painfully Mainstream

Artist: Tom Milsom (vocals and instruments)

Composer: Tom Milsom (words and music)

Credits:
Declan Proud: Bass guitar
Tobar McPhail: Bass guitar and electric guitar
Simon Trought: Acoustic guitar
Tom Milsom: Ukulele, banjo, mandolin, drums and other percussion, piano, keyboards, accordion, bass guitar, electric guitar, melodica, Omnichord, organ, theremin, glockenspiel, slide whistle, kazoo, vocals.

Engineered and helped along by Oli Horton at Dreamtrak and Simon Trought at Soup Studios.
Produced by Tom Milsom.

Track List:
1. Springsong
2. Porphyrophobia
3. Indigo
4. Summersong
5. Jake’s Song
6. Animals
7. Autumnsong
8. Song for the Painfully Indie
9. They
10. Wintersong
11. Mixtape

Description:

Tom Milsom’s new album, ‘Painfully Mainstream’, skips from genre to genre, briefly settling on pop, folk and rock, and skipping through subtler shades of music, from post-rock to antifolk, from gypsy-punk to all-out thrash metal, but held under control and pinned together with Milsom’s unforced, uniquely British vocal style.

The backbone of the album consists of four songs named after seasons, ‘Autumnsong’ being a nine-minute post-rock epic reminiscent of Mogwai or Explosions In The Sky, while ‘Wintersong’ is a Pink Floyd tinged closer to an album that ends almost impossibly differently to how it started.

The album title is clearly a joke, but subtler than you might imagine. Hidden amongst this unusual album are nuggets of instrumentation not out of place on many records you hear every day on the radio – it’s not the techniques Milsom uses that are unusual; it’s how he hangs them together that makes this record something completely unique. It’s as though, in his search for a fitting medium to express himself, he sets off on a journey through music and comes up with something at once like everyone else, and like nobody other than himself.