It’s been a while since I’ve done a good “first listen” to a recording and jotted down my thoughts, and I thought today would be a nice day to do so. So here goes:

Ryan Scott Oliver’s Future Demons is an accidental find, and what a great find! I had obtained this album earlier this year, but this tiny album got lost in the shuffle of my life. I stumbled upon the track My Life With RH Macy earlier today and ended up listening to it a few times on repeat. That is typically a sign that I will give a new album a good listen. A minute into the track, I’m hooked into the chorus being belted by a woman channeling Sutton Foster in all the best ways, and I have to stop what I’m doing and listen to this song. It’s like Rob Cantor, Tori Amos, and Jeanine Tesori got together and decided to write an intoxicating opening number for a Broadway show. Oliver is clearly comfortable with odd-tempos and the art of combining musicality with syllable/syntax structure.

Oliver utilizes an interesting lineup of orchestrations. His opening number goes HAM with sounds from timpani, harpsicord(?), angelic choral backup singers, men chanting and channeling Monster from Frozen, and no shortage of extra beats. It’s really great. It’s an exciting listen. I am left wanting more.

Regarding the timing of the release, 2020 was obviously a strange, and uncomfortable year for musical theatre. And we started to see new and out of the box methods for showcasing musicals. I enjoy some of these recent smaller Cast Recording “EPs,” if you will, as a preview of what the future of American theatre will be.

The songs James Harris and Story We Used to Tell are not as memorable as the opening number, but good enough to keep my interest. Which is so great because the track What a Thought is a total trip.

In What a Thought, we are pulled into a pulsing 3/4 time driving electric guitar synth riff. A seemingly normal conversation between a couple is the backdrop of this maniacal and psychopathic song. We hear the inner thoughts of a man contemplating murder. And step by step, going though hypotheticals, overanalyzing each nuisance and trying to convince and dissuade himself simultaneously from commuting such a crime. The piano-supported normal-sounding dialogue is interspliced with horrifying string passages. Like the horror film Psycho type of horrifying strings. Ree Ree Ree Ree Like someone is being stabbed repeatedly. But with a violin. Anyway, the last track is decent and wraps things ups musically, but I don’t have much to say about it.

All in all, these 5 tracks sound fresh, smart, and promising. As Broadway sleeps, and we all wait patiently in our homes listening to cast albums, and the world falls apart around us, we are left to imagine what the future will look like. For me, this tiny recording is a snapshot of just that, and a reminder that there are good things to come.