Seven Songs — it doesn’t get more straightforward than that. The actual music, on the other hand, is a bit more complex, with different melodic tones and beats. The one thing that does stay the same is the steadiness of this guy’s vocals, which listeners will find aesthetically soothing.
Grandpa Was a Lion (“In a Dream,” Summer Jams ’11) consists of one man, and one man only: Justin D’Onofrio. Developing an ambient sound, D’Onofrio sounds a bit like Bon Iver but with a little more mystique. A quality that many artists often try too hard to achieve, but Grandpa Was a Lion does so with ease. D’Onofrio has stated about his music, “The only goal I have for my music is that I want it to sound like nothing else. I want it to stick out like a sore thumb. The components of a piece may be familiar but as a whole I want to create a new vision of what music can be. Where its’ been, where it is and where its going. And I want for it to be good.” Determined, perhaps, but his music attests to this ambition. So maybe there’s remnants of other bands, but the sound D’Onofrio has created is all his own.
The track “Basketball Savants” addresses this idea most clearly. Beginning with just a few percussion notes that continue to underlay the whole song, the song has bursts of electric beats that nicely compliment the acoustic strumming, and fairly fit the enticing title. Other tracks, such as “The Test Dream” and “Belgian Waves,” have a similar approach in that a simple acoustics or percussions ease their way into the song, so that the electronics don’t feel too overwhelming. It’s a very natural, dreamy vibe, so subtle that one gets the irony of the band’s title: a mix of force and sleepy-ness, power and silence. No matter how you say it, Seven Songs is an interesting collection of pleasant music.