Eric Pulido's 'To Each His Own' album review

In today’s blog, I am going to be reviewing an album released early this year by Eb the Younger most notably known as Eric Pulido. The album ‘To Each His Own’ was Pulido’s first solo album of his career and featured on it 11 songs which I will be reviewing 5 of them so you guys can get a feel for his style and if you want to listen to him more, firstly some background knowledge on Pulido. In 1999 the band Midlake formed consisting of a few mates from Denton, Texas in the USA one of which being McKenzie Smith a lifelong friend of Eric Pulido. The band's main focus was on folk/indie progressive rock and has so far released 4 full albums since their formation. Pulido joined Midlake shortly after guitarist Jason Upshaw departed and in 2004 they released their first full album ‘Bamnan and Silvercork’ through Bella Union record label. The band is still going with their last album dropping in 2013 ‘Antiphon’ and their last single dropping in 2016 ‘Fairest Way.’ Since then two members of the band have produced solo music with Paul Alexander releasing his own solo album ‘Astropsychosis’ in 2018 and then Eric Pulido’s ‘To Each his own’ which we’re going to cover today. As well as that the band Midlake gained a big support from famous skateboarder turned actor Jason Lee (Best known for playing Earl in My name is Earl) who has featured in Pulido’s solo hit ‘Used to be’ music video and even produced and directed the music video to Midlake's ‘Balloon Maker’ song.

Now finally on to the album, the first song on the album is ‘Used to be,’ straight away in my opinion the best track on the album. ‘Used to be’ focuses on the idea of looking back to your younger days and realising that as you grow up things drastically change. The lyric ‘it ain’t like it used to be’ I believe shows that perfectly. Used to be is a powerful and beautiful song made up of a mixture of percussion, drums and a sweet acoustic sound. The song is just an amazing piece of music with a powerful melody describing a man looking back on his youth. The chorus which starts with ‘when we were young’ is very well structured with a very nice buildup to it. But then towards the end of the song we get a very well done beat change with a harsher sound but still superb. 10/10.

Moving on swiftly, we have ‘Down and Out’ which begins with a very simple and nice acoustic sound which quickly breaks into drums and a melody. The song talks about being down and out, so being upset and depressed essentially and talks about how two people felt like they had everything they needed but in the end, it turns out they didn’t, well that’s what I think. Further on in the song, you come to a guitar solo which is very uplifting and well structured before the melody continues, this song is very much a dancing/clapping song to get an audience moving. EBs vocals are accompanied very well with a female harmony in the background which brings in the sense of two people singing to each other. Overall a very good song and one to listen to if you’re feeling ‘down and out’. 8/10.

Now we move on to a song that is up there with ‘Used to be’, by far my father’s favourite song of the album and my second favourite. Another song that sort of dwells on the past and the youth that is no longer there, the lyric ‘don’t forget me’ is pretty self-explanatory. The song begins with a small piano tune which builds the song up. Throughout the song, we have McKenzie Smith absolute killing it on the drums along with Pulido's outstanding guitar sound. A mixture of instruments, incredible lyrics and beautiful harmonies makes this one of the best songs on the whole album, but for me ranks just behind Used to be. 9/10.

So for our fourth song we have a song called ‘Monterey’, which again is another one of my favourites of the album, it begins with a nice acoustic section before Pulido begins to sing. Verse 1 is accompanied with the same acoustic sound throughout, going with the lyrics very well before the chorus breaks out. This song I found particularly hard to try and evaluate, however, the lyrics are beautiful. The use of words such as ‘merry go round’ and ‘rollercoaster town’ expresses the happiness and fun in the song, definitely worth a listen. Again another song with insane rhythm and flow, the progressive rock element is to be admired. 7/10.

And finally we come to the song ‘To Each His Own’ the name of the album, which begins with a very nice and sort of unstable guitar tune but he manages to make it sound good. For a majority of the first half of the song, the tune stays the same but the melody brings it all together before a guitar solo accompanied by background harmonies begins. This song isn’t as energetic as some of the songs already mentioned, but its melody and vibe bring the whole album together and one would only assume this is the reason for it being the last song of the album. 8/10.

I hope you guys enjoyed my first blog and found it an easy and interesting read. Some of you may not have heard of Eric Pulido or even Midlake but I would thoroughly recommend listening to them as I feel they are a hidden gem. I’ll be going to an exclusive private show to see Eric Pulido on the 1st September so I’ll be doing a blog reviewing his performance. Give the album a listen it’s incredible and of course if you did enjoy the blog feel free to give me some feedback or even share it.