An indie rock marriage of acoustic and electric from an apartment in the middle of nowhere.

7 MP3 Songs in this album (29:33) !
Related styles: ROCK: Acoustic, ROCK: Modern Rock

People who are interested in Ben Folds Bright Eyes Snow Patrol should consider this download.


Details:
To Charles is Josh Howard and heâs probably not worth listening to. Heâs been writing and recording his songs for awhile now, but this is his first album of doing it all himself. He grew up in the small town of Ottawa, Kansas and was influenced by the storytelling of old country music (not the dreadful trash of today), the frustration of Green Day and the most superficial of Christian music. Now heâs caught up in the cynical humor of Ben Folds, the dramatic storytelling of Bright Eyes and the complex landscape of Radiohead.

You can hear these influences throughout âThe Ink Soaked the Pageâ. His transparent honesty is endearing even when it gets down to what a horrible person he sometimes thinks he is. The 7 songs are snapshots of how a single day can change all those that follow. His tone is one of reflection, optimism and a refusal to regret that tempers the otherwise disheartening depictions of adoption, tragic mistakes and religious hypocrisy.

âThere were things that had to get out and this way seemed best,â Howard said. âI had felt cornered in my own head for too longâ¦I got tired of Ben Folds and other artists reminding me so specifically what I was feeling. I thought I should do it myself.â

The name âTo Charlesâ come from a particular Charlie whom Howard met at a Christian camp in Arkansas. He was entirely unmemorable until guilting his young audience into filling two industrial-sized trash cans with secular music and disposing of it in the name of God. The music of To Charles is written as a conscious revolt against the kind of thinking that says truth is contained only within Christianity.