Peter Cincotti

Pop and jazz-influenced pianists like Peter Cincotti are normally an acquired taste, one that is preferred by a more "mature" demographic of listeners who is well out of their twenties and enjoys a high brow brand of music to accompany those long, late nights. Cincotti, with his squeaky clean image, boyish good looks, falsetto and crooning, will undoubtedly attract women in their 30s with his brand of adult alternative pop music. But Cincotti has the same crossover appeal of someone like James Blunt or even Josh Groban, thanks to his simple yet stunning compositions.

On East of Angel Town, Cincotti blazes through an assortment of moods and tempos. He isn't scared of letting his listeners peak into his heart and see what he's thinking and feeling, but that's not to suggest that his music is confessional. Rather, Cincotti is a storyteller. "Angel Town" is an upbeat ode to the place that Cincotti loves, while "Lay Your Body Down Goodbye Philadelphia" is a quiet, serious and thoughtful meditation that's worth a listen on a rainy day.

"December Boys" is led by its piano melody and grand sonic gestures. Cincotti again ruminates on life as he sees it, knows it and lives it. He is a thinker who uses his lyrics as the vehicle for letting stories unfold, and he effectively sweeps the listener up into his world and his thoughts with this methodology. He's not as vivid or as detailed as say, Billy Joel, but he gets the job done and still ensnares his audience, not so much by what he says, but how he says it. With Cincotti, it's all about the delivery of the message; the content of the message is there, and it's balanced out by the package in which he wraps it.

— Amy Sciarretto
02.16.09

Peter Cincotti's 2009 release East of Angel Town is the vocalist/pianist's first album since his 2004 sophomore effort, On the Moon. That album found the onetime neo-crooner moving from jazz standards to more contemporary pop-oriented original material. East of Angel Town finds Cincotti having fully made the crossover move, and fittingly the album features production by crossover Svengali David Foster as well as Humberto Gatica and Jochem van der Saag. Foster has helmed similar efforts from such genre-bending artists as vocalists Josh Groban and Michael Bublé. That said, neither of those artists has ever gone quite as far toward the pop/rock vein as Cincotti does here. Still displaying a knack for jazz and blues-inflected melodies, Cincotti nevertheless dives headlong into the rock world. Tracks such as the sharp-tongued and urbane leadoff title track, with its hard-edged guitar backgrounds and lyrics detailing the superficial lives of N.Y.C. scenesters, bring to mind the theatrical '70s singer/songwriter pop of both Rupert Holmes and Steely Dan. In fact, Steely Dan seem to be the biggest touchstone for Cincotti here. Which isn't to say he rips off them off -- on the contrary, as the production on Angel Town is so thoroughly modern, you'd never mistake it for classic Steely Dan. Nonetheless, Cincotti's mix of jazz, blues, and crisply drawn singer/songwriter lyrics clearly draws much inspiration from Steely Dan and other eclectic artists of the '70s and '80s, including Elton John and Billy Joel. Keeping in that tradition, it's not just the rockers, but primarily Cincotti's ballads that really stick in your ears, with both "Lay Your Body Down (Goodbye Philadelphia)" and "Cinderella Beautiful" delivering a warm, melancholy afterglow vibe. Similarly, "Man on a Mission" is a perfect soft rock ballad. Taken as a whole, East of Angel Town is a somewhat sprawling and stylistically varied pop album that finds Cincotti meandering all over the creative map. However, in the world of crossover singer/songwriter pop that's actually kind of the goal, and in that sense Cincotti is right on course. ~ Matt Collar, All Music Guide