It is a recurring event in my life that whenever I hear a new song by former Tempe, currently Los Angeles-based songwriter Tom Filardo, it becomes my favorite song for a week. The last time this happened was when I saw the music video for "I Don't Getcha Kid" at the opening of the Tempe Museum of Contemporary Art last month.
The song embodies a lot of what I like about Filardo's music. It's catchy and fun, and takes some ideas that could potentially come out corny and rolls with them to their logical extent. It is pop music, but it is one person's oblique and whimsical vision of it.
"I guess I'll always be a 'pop musician,'" Filardo says, "I always want to make music that has something of a reward in it. I'm not that drawn, currently at least, to making music that is primarily conceptual. I like to have a carrot at the end of the stick."
"I Don't Getcha Kid" is one of many rewarding tracks on Filardo's recently released LP, Falling Up. Like his previous works, it is joyfully scatterbrained in its compositions and inspirations, but it is cohesive in that it all seems to carry the stamp of a specific owner.
"I feel like it sounds a little less like my influences and a little more like me," Filardo says.
This chaotic but pleasant patchwork of songs Filardo has assembled might be off-putting at first because of the audacity and flamboyance of its delivery, but if you give it a chance you will find an outsider pop record that may very well contain your next favorite song.
Falling Up is available now from Holy Page Records.
