Tim Pepper

Artist:Tim Pepper
Album: Beautiful Frustration


Tim Pepper knows how to write. His intelligence and way with words shows not only on his latest album, Beautiful Frustration, but on his website and his personal blog. He calls himself quiet, saying he does more listening than talking. Maybe he should speak up more often; he clearly has a lot to say, and a smart, quirky way of doing so.

Beautiful Frustration is a poppy, happy album that sounds like Jason Mraz, without being so cutesy it hurts. Pepper is smart, and his lyrics show it. Though he's sometimes cheesy, he has a way of capturing a melody that makes it okay. “Life is a journey/life is a road/every man carries/every man's load” he says on “Life”, a song that could be painfully cute if anyone but Pepper was singing it – instead, it comes across wise. “Yellow Dress Girl” is a warming song about a beautiful girl Pepper ran into, as though he's a much happier James Blunt, looking at the bright side of wanting someone you can't have instead of lamenting it. “I wanna learn to fly on eagles wings/I wanna fly into the sky/above the troubles in my life” he sings on “Eagles Wings”, an upbeat song about looking to God for help. Pepper is a Christian musician, but even those who don't share his religious views can appreciate his wit and charm.

The music on the album isn't phenomenal, but it does it's job. Pepper writes his own songs, but has a backup band that do their part in wrapping up the songs without adding enough to make it a band instead of an artist. Pepper isn't an extraordinary guitar player, but he's not trying to be. He's playing songs with genuine lyrics that you can tell he honestly means, and the music isn't as important. In another genre of music, this could be disastrous, but in the Mraz/Jack Johnson genre (most male singer-songwriters), it's not that big of a problem.

Beautiful Frustration is, seemingly, exactly what Pepper wanted it to be: a friendly introduction to his honest way of speaking and his simple but pleasing guitar parts and melodies. It's an album with a perfect name – the tracks are about frustrating subjects (life, love, living for God, etc), but they're written and sung in a happy, upbeat way as though to prove that while life can be frustrating, you should still be happy about it. Pepper might not be groundbreaking, but his music is sunny and fun, and since that's what he's aiming for, he's done his job.



Abbey K. Davis – MuzikReviews.com Staff
January 23, 2010
- MuzikReviews.com