Press Release: “Painfully Mainstream”

Internet Star Tom Milsom Goes “Painfully Mainstream” In His Second Album, Blending Whimsy, Angst, And Post-Pop Exuberance

Eleven original tunes showcase versatility as composer, lyricist, and performer with styles, ranging from post-rock to anti-folk, from Gypsy-punk to all-out thrash metal

MANHATTAN, Illinois and LONDON, England —  1 December 2009 YouTube star Tom Milsom’s second album, “Painfully Mainstream,” takes listeners on a wide-ranging journey through post-pop musical genres, as he ponders issues as weighty as the survival of the planet and as urgent as whether he’ll get laid tonight.

U.S.-based DFTBA Records has released the album for worldwide availability as a physical CD as well as for digital download through iTunes and Amazon.com.

At twenty, Milsom is a product of today’s mashup culture, drawing on a range of musical influences. A London-based YouTube celebrity with more than two and a half million views—about half from the U.S.—Milsom has built a loyal base of fans of his music. His songs speak to their shared concerns and uncertainties with witty lyrics, and a pop-flavored musical vocabulary that is, at one and the same time, utterly familiar, yet uniquely Tom Milsom.

“It’s hard to write funny songs that are not moronic and then to deliver them with conviction,” noted Dave Dederer, founding guitarist and singer of the GRAMMY-nominated band, The Presidents of the United States of America. “Tom Milsom is one of the few who can do it.”

Novelist John Green calls Milsom, “one of the best songwriters of his generation,” adding, “His songs are as smart as they are catchy.”

The music of “Painfully Mainstream,” like the title, embodies the tension between Milsom’s facility with shimmering pop and his passion for adventurous post-rock avant-garde. While the beats and instrumentation on “Painfully Mainstream” would sound fully at home on records heard every day on the radio, Milsom hangs these familiar building blocks together in ways that make this recording something completely his own.

The album is unified by four anchor songs named after the seasons. This seasonal backbone creates a cycle of emotional and tonal contexts for the more pop- and rock-oriented songs that showcase Tom’s witty and dexterous lyrics and his intimate and uniquely British vocal style. Tom not only wrote the words and music for the Album, he also produced it, playing nearly two-dozen instruments.

Standouts in the season-cycle include  ‘Autumnsong’, a nine-minute post-rock epic, and “Wintersong”, which closes the album a world away from it’s opening ‘Springsong’.

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

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About Tom Milsom: Called “unfairly talented” in London’s Metro, twenty-year-old Tom Milsom creates in media as diverse as pop music, film, poetry, animation, and comic books. Among his musical influences are Philip Glass, Tom Lehrer, Dan Deacon, They Might Be Giants, and Sufjan Stevens. “Painfully Mainstream” is his second full-length CD

About DFTBA Records: Founded and owned by musician-entrepreneurs Hank Green and Alan Lastufka, DFTBA Records serves as a publishing and distribution arm for some of the most talented and popular creative artists on YouTube, the world’s premier online video community.

Contacts:

US: Alan Lastufka, DFTBA Records

Telephone:  +1 815.315.0346

Email:  alan@dftba.com

UK: Lauren Berry,  Left Field Media

Telephone:  01737 831822

Email:  lauren@leftfieldmedia.co.uk