Review Summary: Fun and inoffensiveness are Chalk Dinosaur’s strongest - and weakest - assets
John O'Halloron's debut album
Chalk Dinosaur is innocence and fun at it’s most inoffensive. Every track bounces along with a happy-go-lucky attitude and it’s songwriting screams youthful bliss. It’s the childlike innocence that makes, and breaks,
Chalk Dinosaur as the “fun” presentation is it’s strongest and weakest assets. John O’Hallaron proves consistently that he has a keen ear for infectious melodies. The simplistic guitar leads and O'Halloron's cutesy vocals interlacing with the soft vocal harmonies, smooth synths, and strong violin arrangements among other things create charm that oozes out from the tracks. The overall cuteness and charm of the album keeps your attention sealed tight with the opening tracks, but sadly, it doesn’t manage to keep it for the album’s entirety.
While
Chalk Dinosaur does have it’s positives, a lot of them are drowned out by how uninteresting it becomes the farther it goes. In the sense that O'Halloron's simplicity and cuteness has little driving power for an eleven track album. While the starting tracks start off powerful, many of them barely have enough to make them stand out from one another. And while the tracks are enjoyable in their own isolated listens, since only a small handful tracks are actually boring on their own, trying to trudge through them in one sitting becomes exhausting. While the lasting factor of this album is questionable, there is no doubt that what John O’Halloron present on
Chalk Dinosaur is catchy and fun enough to warrant a casual listen. Or at the very least, a good cherry picking of the tracks.
