Winsome teenage pop written and sung by a teenager

The eighteen-year-old Indiana-born Chase Coy is sprung from the same youthful fountain as Taylor Swift. But absent the marketing that’s propelled Ms. Swift to superstardom, Coy’s music retains a youthful sweetness that’s not yet been turned into fodder for videos and arenas. He’s either the real deal or the product of a marketing flack clever enough to blog a picture of Coy’s girlfriend and the explanation “she is the source of every love song I’ve written in the past 1 year, 2 months, and 17 days.” He’s also blogged a picture of his computer desktop which shows his girlfriend’s college schedule, lest he “bother her while she’s in class.” Those soul churning emotions are at the root of Coy’s songwriting and painfully earnest singing, but if you’re old enough to have lost that summer feeling, his winsomeness will take you on a winning trip down memory lane.

When Jonathan Richman casts himself back to the innocence of youth and to the unfiltered immediacy of a young person’s thoughts, it’s quirky. But when Coy luxuriates in the charms of home life and moons over the suffocating yearnings, joys and heartbreaks of teenage love, you hear the in-the-moment youthful sensitivity to which Richman aspires. This collection is gathered from several earlier independent releases, and features Coy singing many of these songs with just his acoustic guitar; a few tracks add minimal keyboards and strings. The lack of production gives these recordings the feeling of a teenager pouring his heart out to a bedroom recorder; in fact they were recorded in Coy’s basement. You can hear where the producers of Coy’s upcoming Picturesque will inscribe arrangements to turn these diary entries into publishable works, and in doing so shave off some of Coy’s charming emotional peach fuzz. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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