John Linden Music

Way back when (well, eight months ago or so) I shared some acoustic songs I had done under the name Johnny Linden with all of you. I've done away with the Johnny and just went to my birth name (for a couple reasons, I suppose).

Anyway, I just finished a six-song EP today called Chamber Echoes that I'm immensely proud of. Wouldn't change a thing on there. Not being arrogant or whatever, I just really like the way it turned out. I've become a much better musician in the past six months and have gotten better at recording, so it's not just me and an acoustic guitar anymore.

The link for the Chamber Echoes last.fm page is here: http://www.last.fm/music/John+Linden/Chamber+Echoes. I hope some of you cats check it out. If you do, feel free to let me know what you think of it. I definitely think it'd appeal to fans of Gaslight (obviously), The Hold Steady, The National, Arcade Fire, etc. Maybe throw the Boss in there as well.

I hope these songs can have some impact on you, as they have for me. Cheers, everyone.

Nice work! I have some of your 'old' songs on my hard-drive, these sound more polished indeed.

But, to be honest, the raw, acoustic-only songs you recorded back then fitted your voice more in my opinion. These songs and the use of piano, drums and even strings (which sounded really cool by the way) don't fit your voice (or the way you record it) as much as your old, less sophisticated (to say so) ones did. That's just what I feel after a quick listen through some of the songs. It's as if your voice is a bit behind in recording/producing quality or something like that. It isn't bad at all though, I'm just kinda picky when it comes to vocals I suppose =)

I'm really impressed with the amount of effort that seems to have gone into it and as always I bow down to both the quality and quantity of lyrics you manage to produce. I will give it the whole thing a spin today.

Keep the music coming!

I kinda asked this question on last.fm but I'll briefly summarize it here: Was the comment on my voice more the actual quality of my singing or the way it sounds mixed with the instruments? Like is it that you don't like my voice, or it doesn't sound as well recorded as the instruments?

Thanks for listening, man. And I love the feedback; helps me get better and know what to improve upon.

I'll be honest too. I think you're a really good songwriter with potential. But I feel like you should stick with the acoustic stuff until you have a better way to record drums, piano etc. No matter how good the songs are, the non-guitar instruments have this "almost real" sound that distracts me and makes it hard to get into the music.

But keep it up man. Kudos for putting your music out here for everyone to hear. One of your acoustic tracks popped up on shuffle today and I didn't skip it. (If you know how I listen to songs on shuffle, that's a compliment!)

Well, thanks for listening, man. I know you had sort of the same issue when I tried a similar full-on arrangement a while back. I think it sounds much better now, but I won't force my opinion on you. I like that you're being honest and not bullshitting me.

So I guess what I'm saying is I doubt I'll go back to just acoustic guitar and vocals (at least not all the time; maybe a song here or there, as well as all the gigs I do are just me and a guitar) but I'm always trying to tweak and improve the sounds of the instruments I use to make them sound as good as possible. I think I've actually made improvements in the sound quality of some of them even in the past couple days since that EP was released, so who knows? Maybe you'll dig the next one if you check it out.

Thanks again for listening. I always appreciate honest feedback and constructive criticism.

Well, I just posted the follow-up EP, The Outskirts, to last.fm. Huge-sounding and I'm pleased with it on all levels, really. Check it out if you can: http://www.last.fm/music/John+Linden/The+Outskirts.

As you can see in my avatar, I released my first full-length LP, entitled Ghost Carousel. It's something of a concept album, with an overarching narrative interwoven throughout each song. Really proud of this thing. Check it out if you can.

http://www.last.fm/music/John+Linden/Ghost+Carousel

Hey, I went back to the acoustic model of doing things and I released a demo of eleven of my best songs on my artist page. http://www.last.fm/music/John+Linden/Unplugged