Rootstime Review

 

John Finn is a well-know musician who started to write and compose his own songs on a young age and used simple melodies to sing funny, ironic and emotional songs.

He’s no doubt the leader of Esquela, which originally was just a duo, but now a band of 3 key players: ‘Chico’ Finn, a female singer Rebecca Frame who just only recently joined, and undoubtedly the brain behind it all: Keith Christopher, who was the founder of the group Georgia Satellite now in the past. (**NOTE: Chico and KC co-wrote The Owl Has Landed, and they recorded most everything on it themselves. Rebecca Frame is a “key player,” for sure)

Esquela recently launched their debut album “The Owl Has Landed”.

It contains 10 original songs that deserve/need to be listened at a few times before we think they will have proper impact.

…feels like “live” a bit like in the 70’s laid-back style.
A lot of guest musicians were brought into the studio to contribute to the recording.

The strong vocals of Rebecca in the style of Bonnie Raitt or Janis Joplin…

The first track on the CD is called “Commies Stink,” a song that Chico wrote in his last years of high school and is a feel-good sing-a-long song (**NOTE: truth is, Chico wrote it as an 8th grader. He pitched it to the Ramones, but received no response, strangely).

After that comes “Here And Now” from Rebecca followed by a swinging rock song called “Jackie” about an American football star who managed to escape from being accused of manslaughter on 2 people with the help of the school council.

The first single and sarcastic “Hands On My Jammies” song by Chico tells about his strange sexual preferences, if taken lightly, can be actually found funny(**NOTE: this “strange sexual preferences” language was ripped from our old, fake bio. Another note: we have phased out the fake bio concept).

Keith Christopher did the vocals for the engaging song “Tin Horns”.

The strong soul sounds (vocals) of Rebecca suit perfectly for the song “Richie” and is, to us, the best song of “The Owl Has Landed.”

As mentioned before, we had hoped that the production of Eric ‘Roscoe’ Ambel (who earlier produced Ryan Adams, Marshall Crenshaw, etc.) would be a bit more “smooth”, less rough. We’re guessing it was meant to be like that and we just didn’t understand at first.

See the original review here.