There is something about this album that needs to be said first – everything else about it has to be placed in the context of this one fact. That fact is this – at certain points, this record sounds a little bit like Maroon 5. Not too much, but a little bit. That kind of approach is not going to win me over, that’s for fucking sure.
It is better than Maroon 5. Well the lyrics are quite similar. But the music is not tinged with money grabbing cynicism in the same way. Yet, this is not music that will win over those who like their grittier stuff. It’s high end keyboards and just slightly distored guitars stuck down low in the mix – it’s soaring choruses after slightly dull middle 8s. It’s one of those records that is hard to fully appreciate when you are English, because there are so many English bands doing a faux-American sound, that you forget that some bands in America play that sound for real – and you can never quite tell if an American CD you have review is for real or contrived. I think Danny Rocco and his band do it for real – you can hear some Get Up Kids in there, you can hear a bit of Dashboard Confessional.
The best bits of this album are the ones that are based around him and his acoustic – an album of just those two elements would be pretty damn good I reckon. But mix it in with the full band thing – a sound that is absolutely at home with some major-label constructed, chart bands right now, and you have a real hit and miss affair.
(If you read this review past the words ‘this record sounds a little bit like Maroon 5’, then you’ll probably like it you know.)
Mike