I give you props man.
I know how difficult it is to put together an album; how much of yourself you have to invest. My brother-in-law is a composer/songwriter. He just released his second album a couple days ago (progressive rock; very complex arrangements).
I made sure to give several songs multiple listens.
The music isn't really my thing, so take the comments with a grain of salt.
It sounds to me like it fits into the same genre as John Mayer's first album.
To me, your strength is the way you layer instruments and melodies and make them play together. Unfortunately, you don't take full advantage of that and instead you focus on the lyrics and singing, which is the least impressive part of the music.
Example: some of my favorite music is the first 22 seconds of "Away". It's a very nice chord progression to open the song. At the 12 second mark you layer a clean electric arpeggio over the top of the chord progression played by the acoustic guitar - the whole thing produces a brilliant and warm musical sound. The next 10 seconds is bliss!
But then you cut away from that too soon! The music has no time to breath before you jump into the very pedestrian sounding verse backing music so you can sing. Nothing interesting happens for another 90 seconds. Finally, at the 2:08 mark the bass comes in and gives us some musical depth. At 4:45 you've got a nice little clean descending scale run with the guitar, but it doesn't really go anywhere. It's like a tease.
Same goes for "Follow Me" (my other favorite track). In the first 15 seconds I'm hooked. A very simple but effective piano chord progression backed with symphonic keys (choir Ahs) and arpeggio notes. When the chorus hits you add a nice arpeggio melody with an acoustic guitar. The blending of these various instruments is the strength of the song, and we, as the listener, are begging to hear these instruments weave variations on the themes introduced in the beginning.
But this is essentially a 3-chord song for the three-and-a-half minute running time. Nothing happens. The song doesn't go anywhere. You've once again teased your listener with the promise of a very interesting melody, but you don't develop it at all; it just gets repeated. I'm left sitting there when it's over thinking, "Is that it? That sounded so promising! What happened?"
Your musicianship - your ability to compose melodies and layer instruments to create a thick and rich musical effect - are your strengths. But you don't play to them. You get caught up in the whole lyrics/singing bit. It's like the listener can feel the pressure of trying to become famous.
The music of the songs feel like they were originally really great ideas, but they got condensed in the pressure cooker of modern pop sensibilities that have been created by the likes of American Idol where everything is compressed and musical passages are sacrificed just to expose the vocals; the musicality gets lost in the process.
Anyway, I hope that made sense. Here's an example of what I mean by letting the music breath and actually "doing something" with a melodic idea:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1fZzf_x ... re=related
There's a lot more at work here than three chords. But noticed how the song noticeably shifts at the 3:00 mark, and the solo at 4:15 with all the power and emotion, and then how at 4:45 the solo changes as well. There's this building process throughout the song; instruments layered, themes expanded, emotion is built until the crescendo at 5:20 that carries the through the rest of the song.
You've written some songs that could do this sort of thing - be powerful and interesting.
At any rate - kudos on the album dude. You should be proud of your work man.
Gee...I hope I wasn't too harsh...I liked his stuff a bit, just thought he could do more...