Album Of The Day: The Boy Vs. The Cynic by John Reuben

Album Art of John Reuben's The Boy Vs. The Cynic album - A photo of a white man with dark, curly hair sitting on the edge of a precipice and looking down with a bit of a blank stare. The precipice looks like it's a prop set up in a studio, as the dirt/stone of it sticks out comically far to where the person is sitting, like it was designed by a cartoonist. There's also a blank wooden sign next to the precipice but without any text on it. Behind it is a blue background, with white fluffy clouds suspended in front of it, with thin white strings showing that the clouds are hanging from above Above the person's head is the artist's name in a yellow, handwritten script, and the album title in smaller white text below that.

Released 20 years ago later this week (June 21), this is the fourth album from John Reuben, and a bit of a departure from his previous albums. His previous albums were mostly "just plain fun and crazy" (as he says on one of them) and straight hip-hop, while this album gets a bit more variety of sounds with more pop/rock and rap/rock styles present. On songs like "Follow Your Leader", "Sales Pitch" and "What About Them?", John Reuben questions politics and the lines the church leaders are giving American Christianity today. There's still lots of fun, though; "So Glad" is a favorite dance/party song for me to get pumped up to and "Out Of Control" brings the rock 'n' roll to kick off the album. "Nuisance" is probably the most well-known song from this album, and it features Matthew Thiessen of Relient K on the chorus as John Reuben lays out his thesis on this album: He doesn't ask these questions to be a nuisance, "I just think we can do better than this." Thanks, John, for leading the fun and giving us some thoughts to ruminate on. It's not the most cohesive album ever, but I love all of it.

Release Year: 2005
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Categories: 
Album Of The Day
Music

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