By Remi Watts
The Gauntlet offices are often flooded with new records, making it tempting to simply toss discs out based on artwork alone. Australian native Kim Churchill’s second album, Turns to Stone, was no exception, being one of the most terribly designed albums since Brooks & Dunn’s Hard Workin’ Man.
However, since someone took the effort to send this wretched-looking disc to an obscure campus newspaper office, then they must have been trying to connect with university students. Thus, the album was given the careful consideration that it was due. Unfortunately, it did not take long to realize that Turns to Stone will probably not appeal to university students. The album combines Churchill’s eighth-grade level poetry skills with his severely lacking vocals, creating the ultimate album for forty-something stay-at-home mothers and their tween daughters through whom they live vicariously. Churchill’s capacity as a talented whistler and guitar strummer is not enough to redeem him.
Just try not to let your brain hemorrhage when, in the song “It’s the System,” Churchill reaches lyrical perfection with the lines “Sometimes this world makes me mad/sometimes this world makes me sad.” It’s just too easy and too boring.