Listen: Tim Korenich ‘Change of Pace’ EP

This week our friends at the NAH Collective passed on Tim Korenich‘s debut solo EP Change of Pace, six songs composed for the indie short film Monhegan Light. Korenich is a singer/songwriter out of Pittsburgh who, after years of playing in local bands, decided to step out on his own. Recorded at 3 Elliott in Athens, OH, with the help of some student musicians from Ohio U, on Change of Pace Korenich crafts understated indie pop from the simplest of means, with his rural melodies being the perfect accompaniment for the film’s beautiful, Maine coast setting!
The EP’s strongest tracks, the stark, bare-bones opener “We Can Start Again“, and the more indie leaning “Rotten Wood“, have a real organic, crafted-by-hand kind of feel, and Korenich’s warm, dry voice feels right at home as he narrates his tales of love and loss. “Rotten Wood”‘s more plugged in chamber pop can also be found on the beautiful instrumental number, “Intro“, where soaring emotive strings meet Korenich’s exuberantly strummed guitar in a rousing updraft of melody, as well as the back porch hum along, “Traveling Music“. However, while “Mr. Brown’s Blues“, the EP’s other instrumental cut, adds a cinematic ambience to this collection with it’s nostalgic horn solo and acoustic guitar, and probably fits the film’s needs nicely, as an audio piece, it doesn’t quite carry the pop grandeur or creative momentum of “Intro”, or even “Traveling Music”.
Throughout Change of Pace, Korenich employs a very approachable, “plain spoken” poetry full of vivid observations to deliver the album’s emotional weight. Lines like “Rotten Wood“‘s eviscerating realization, “Everything I’ve built will crumble/It was bound to fail from the start…”, or “We Can Start Again“‘s, “The light to your house has gown dark/I guess I’ll find a new home…” have “meat on the bone”, some real emotion to sink your teeth into, and are the more powerful for their intimacy and raw honesty. The only place this really goes awry is on “Martin’s Theme“, where the poetry of, “Oh, but the daylight is all but captured/in forget-me-nots scattered by your door”, or “coffee rings on your end table/cigarette butts strewn across the lawn”, are too easy, and sound like watered down, “lite” versions of Korenich’s more closely lived writing!
Tim Korenich will finish a short tour of the midwest tonight in Toledo, OH at the Ottawa Tavern, and word from the folks over at NAH is that the singer/songwriter is working on a new batch of songs for an LP to be released next spring, sometime. We will keep you posted when we know more. So till then, enjoy this excellent, first effort!