Chris Van Loan

Rebirth (CVL Music)

“If this were jazz, it would be bebop; it would be Coltrane,” boasts Chris Van Loan on the title track of Rebirth. Not quite. The acoustic set overflows with humorless philosophical musings like a recital of Chicken Soup for the Soul set to guitar. “Life Is Fleeting” and “This Is the Day” prove the Philly native earnest to a fault, and reading what sounds like a list of new year’s resolutions on “True to Me” he declares, “I resolve to be patient yet persistent, knowing that you get more from life when you flow with it than against it.” Accompanied solely by his own plucking on all but two tracks, Van Loan offers sounds remarkably similar to the last, the mold only broken on “The More I Learn,” a clichéd coffee-shop recitation on transcendental meditation. In the end, Rebirth is rather lifeless.

*.5

This article appears in August 1 • 2008.

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Thomas Fawcett has been freelancing for The Austin Chronicle since 2007. He likes good music and does not fake the funk.