Life Trip is the alias of folk rocker Chip Symonds, an independent musician who has been recording out of North Carolina for over fifteen years and American Dream, which is his latest recording, is a collection of eleven socially conscious songs. Symonds performs all the instruments on American Dream playing sax, flute, guitar, bass and keyboards with a remarkable amount of proficiency, save for the simple synthetic drum patterns which unfortunately comes across as just sounding too cheesy at times. Chip's songs tackle a wide variety of subject matter including everything from potheads, unemployment and immigration to the green movement and excessive T.V. watching. Overall the music is fairly light and a bit on the fluffy side, but there are definitely some fireworks to be found on American Dream if the listener is patient enough. The extended flute and sax solos on the title track are a perfect example of how things can heat up when Symonds chooses to stretch out a little bit. Still not convinced? Another blazing flute solo, this time in "The Children of War" has a real Ian Anderson vibe to it and in fact this song sounds like it would have fit nicely on Songs From The Wood
era Tull.
Ultimately American Dream is a pretty solid collection of well written and performed songs and Life Trip is certainly worth checking out. It would be nice though to hear some more organic percussion work on future releases as I think it would better compliment the rest of the instruments. Nice job otherwise.
Track Listing
1) $1.99 Six Pack
2) Road Trip
3) The Earth Don't Need Us (it's we who need the earth)
4) Pot Head Rebellion
5) At The Game
6) Mexico
7) American Dream
8) The Children of War
9) Supreme Destruction
10) Last Words
11) T.V. Zombie
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