Jon Hainstock – A Pale Blue Dot

Album Reviews • Thursday June 4th, 2009 • 9:36 am

Wisconsin-native Jon Hainstock’s second full-length album, A Pale Blue Dot, does everything it can to come off looking like a major label release. The album’s cover is a brooding Hainstock staring into a black backdrop, giving him a more polished pop-star look than on his past album and EP. The music is more slickly produced, creating something of a hybrid between the Hainstock of old and a more new-sounding blend of pop-punk backdrops with his mellow vocals layered atop solid full-band performances.

But Hainstock produced the album himself, recording bass and drums during one set of studio sessions, spending the bulk of a year playing around with the arrangements of piano and vocals, his specialty. With a little help from Caleb Crockett on mixing, Hainstock has crafted what sounds like a major-label debut while maintaining his independent streak musically. That certainly bodes well for his musical future.

On the other hand, that production gloss, even done on his own terms, makes many of these songs blend into each other during repeated listens. Still, there’s a lot of what made his debut album Jon Hainstock and its follow-up EP, Tell The Truth, such attractive listens. “Never Alone” may be the finest ballad Hainstock has written to date, building on a heartfelt piano and vocal melody, layering the bass and drums to create a heartfelt ode to those thinking of taking their lives.

“This is for the ones I forget sometimes,” he sings. “When there’s never hope in sight, It’s time, time to let you know you never have to walk alone.” The song has serious potential with the right marketing touch. Hainstock would be hard-pressed to find a contemporary Christian station unwilling to give this song serious rotation, because it has a message and he stays on point lyrically. It’s also as catchy as any other songs they’d be featuring right now, which works in his favor.

The album’s opener, “I’d Do Anything,” is an excellent rock song, taking a crunchy melody most pop-punk bands would be fighting over if given the chance, and Hainstock’s careful measured vocals give the song balance, preventing it from sounding like most of his contemporaries. And “Empty Glass” builds on a stuttering percussion wave, adding a tight bassline and heartfelt vocals to create one of the album’s most solid hooks. “It’s alright,” he sings in repetition on the chorus, holding each syllable for all its worth, and the song winds up sounding (at least vocally) like Kenna’s New Sacred Cow meets Radiohead’s In Rainbows. With the haunting backing vocals paving the way, this one could be a serious musical time thief if you catch yourself putting it on repeat.

While many of the album’s remaining tracks tend to merge with each other on repeated listens, that’s hardly a terrible thing. Hainstock set out to craft an album of pop-rock songs which could cater to the musically adventurous among us, and he’s managed to build an album that plays well as a whole without becoming pretentious or over-produced. It builds nicely upon the groundwork laid by Jon Hainstock and Tell The Truth, and if Hainstock is serious about continuing to write and produce his own music free of studio interference, he couldn’t have done a much better job on a sophomore effort.

A Pale Blue Dot is certainly worth the time it takes to give a few listens. And unlike many major label albums, it actually grows on you. I can’t think of much more of a compliment to give an up-and-coming artist.