Mark Cullen
CD – ‘In The Moment’ 

-Dave Howell 

It is wonderful that one person can make a CD nowadays from his apartment. It sounds like Cullen is a singer/songwriter who has a way with PC recording. He has gotten excellent production that goes beyond the usual guitar and voice combination. 
His website says the CD ranges from soft rock to humorous tongue-in-cheek bluegrass to pop/modern folk music. I missed the bluegrass, but the soft rock folk music comes pretty close. It sounds like Christian music, with its many songs about family, but there are no mentions of Jesus, which disqualifies it from that genre. 
Cullen writes and performs everything here, except for autoharp and vocals by Melissa Cullen (his daughter) and Mark Defeis on harmony vocals on one song. He gets a full sound based around elementary guitar (mostly acoustic), keyboards, and drums. All the instrumentals were recorded directly to his hard drive. The vocals are solidly done, with Cullen displaying a smooth, strong voice.
The lyrics are all sincere, but with different results. Some are rather pedestrian, as on “You’ve Never Looked More Beautiful” (‘those soft and smiling eyes/shining on my days”). Others are unusual. One highlight is on “High School Days,” where a standard graduation speech is backed by an autoharp. Another song is about James Taylor (!), called “He’s Old Like Me” (“I remember when Baby James used to have hair”).
The pleasing melodies and folk influences done in a smooth fashion should make this CD appeal to fans of James Taylor and other adult contemporary music.
Web site at http://www.geocities.com/iomusicltd/index.html .

-Dave Howell