Alan Getto: If I Punch a Wall

The Brooklyn native, Pittsburgh local Alan Getto is set to release an EP January 10th. The EP is entitled If I Punch a Wall and consists of three songs. The first entitled, “I’d Take it All Back”, second “Jeff Buckley”, and last “Now that You’re Gone”.

“I’d Take it All Back” is a slow, monotonous, progression in which Alan professes, you guessed it, a story of regret and longing over a lost love. Here, a chorus accompanies Alan in his melancholy, his vocals eerily similar in sound to Layne Staley in Jar of Flies. In fact, the song, with it’s simple reverberating guitar chords and brooding harmonica suggest a deep southern influence. This is strange and enticing, considering Alan’s origins. This southern dynamic is explored further in the final track of the EP.

The second song off If I Punch a Wall, “Jeff Buckley”, is the magnum opus of the sampler. Here, fictional or not, Alan recites a personal story of himself floating in the ocean. We know where this is going… or we don’t. After an exposé of description, we are offered Alan’s rejection in the simple act of him getting out of the water and leaving. An homage to the tragic virtuoso, his darkness and his embrace of death are negated. “Jeff Buckley” begins in slow distortion where the listener finds himself, along with Alan, wading in a dark gulch:

I saw the bruised ocean kiss the black and blue lips of the sky

The song builds and ends in Alan’s, simple, human, resolution to get out of the water.

The final track, “Now that You’re Gone”, is a honky-tonk ballad amusing and light in its acceptance of lost love. Here, Alan demonstrates his songwriting ability through an askance rhyming technique which pulls his storytelling forward:

I was stuck in a child’s mind with no one to teach me how
but now that we both graduated every time I see you on campus you’re the one who acts like a child who matriculated into the kindergarten of life
And I do want to say one last thing…
Thank god we didn’t become husband and wife

Twangy and easygoing guitars are accented by a theremin which oscillates spookily throughout, ending the trio of songs on a light, albeit peculiar, note.

Rating: 6.5/10

Leave a Reply