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By Jeremy Azevedo

As we move further and further into the digital age, sharing your creative vision with other musicians in a band is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. We now have computers that can play most any instruments convincingly enough for us, thus eliminating the need for human collaboration.

Some people think this is unnatural, a cop-out. Others call it progress. In the case of Daniel Hunter, the one-man band that is the beating heart of MySpace favorite “PlayRadioPlay”, this shift seems to be working out quite well in his favor.

Like most people you meet from Texas these days, Daniel looks like a pussy. It’s hard to remember that all those bloody westerns you saw as a kid were: A. period pieces and B. populated by tough looking (albeit probably homosexual) actors from California. But while he may look like a weenie, Daniel plays his little keyboards like a goddamn sonuvabitch on fire. I imagine that’s an expression one might use in Texas so I thought I’d throw it in there.


The dude from PRP pretending to be a robot or something, don't ask me why.

Seriously though, this kid is talented, and on top of that, he seems about ten times more modest then some of his underage electro-indie-pop (?) peers (Idiot Pilot, I’m looking at you). There is a humor and humanity to his songwriting that cannot be faked. Also, Daniel thankfully avoids the temptation to overdo the shitty melodramatic high school poetry and instead sings about what he knows in plain English, endearing himself to his peers and also to people that have already been through the things he’s experiencing in some capacity.

The first song on the album, “Loco Motion” (titling is not one of PlayRadioPlay’s strong points), may fool you into thinking that “Texas” is one of those disco rock albums that are becoming so prevalent these days with it’s dance-y, up tempo beat. In actuality, the rest of the album to follow is strictly shoegaze, and I’d probably even go so far as to say that in that particular genre, it’s among the best. Although the album sort of sags in the middle a little bit, nearly every song from start to finish feels complete, catchy, and excellently arranged. If you’re a fan of electro-indie-rock, or really any over-hyphenated genre of music, you should definitely check out PlayRadioPlay’s new album, “Texas”.

CraveOnline Rating: 8 out of 10