One-man band gets playful

Texas PlayRadioPlay! Island Def Jam Music Group Rocks like: The Postal Service, Panic at the Disco

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Every generation of music fans has one main source for its music needs. The 1950s had the Billboard Charts while teens in the late ’60s and ’70s used Rolling Stone magazine. While both are still around and surely still popular, neither is the go-to source anymore. That honor now falls upon MySpace.com, for better or for worse. A major benefit of MySpace allows independent artists a cheap, easy way to access their audiences and communicate with fans. It’s a double-edged sword, though, because the quality of these independent artists usually ranges from terrible to mediocre at best, with the occasional diamond in the rough. Luckily, PlayRadioPlay! isn’t your average indie-pop rock star.

Texas is the first full album released by PlayRadioPlay!, the stage moniker of one-man composer, instrumentalist and vocalist Daniel Hunter. This album is a follow up from PlayRadioPlay!’s The Frequency EP, his 2007 breakout release. Texas builds on the strengths of The Frequency, showcasing a greater maturity in song arrangement and instrumentation.

PlayRadioPlay! is an interesting artist because he blends poppy rock ‘n’ roll with trance/dance music. The fusion makes for a unique listening experience, filled with guitars, synthesizers and vocals that tell a story. Each song on the album can be listened to separately or together as one long, dancey track – not in the sense of thumping club beats, of course, but rather featuring more textured, bouncy rhythms and synth lines, not unlike The Postal Service or even The Killers. PlayRadioPlay! does not try to be a trance group, and it shows – his songs are much more complex and enjoyable than some of the more popular trance or indie dance groups.

If innovation is PlayRadioPlay!’s greatest strength, it’s also his greatest weakness. Because he operates as a one-man band, working with or building on other band member’s work is out of the question. PlayRadioPlay! is innovative in terms of lyrics and music, but that innovation is limited strictly to the mind of one artist. If PlayRadioPlay! collaborates with other artists for later releases, his music has nowhere to go but up.

Texas may not be the best debut album ever produced, but it’s a solid effort coming from a one-man band. The album includes a lot of songs hardcore fans will enjoy while still being accessible to new listeners. Fans of dance and trace music, as well as those of dance-punk and straight rock’n’roll, will definitely want to check out this CD. With a few more years of song writing and composing under his belt, this is going to be one artist to be on the lookout for. PlayRadioPlay! already has a good following, with his popularity only starting to grow.

And as soon as the radio plays his tunes, he just may be unstoppable.