3x****
"Swimming Pool" begins with this voice-over of Damon Gough getting all philosophical, and I shudder that this is how the album is going to be, but it's quick and the rest of the track is a pretty little piano ballad. The title song **** then is as straightforward as the previous song is tentative, and a bit grandiose, with the first reference to the seminal Bruce Springsteen album, but a decent sounding pop song anyway. I am a bit distressed that I can't recommend any one song on the album without qualification, but there are some decent hooks. How to describe "Welcome To The Overground" - it's like a song from a grade school musical, or it's the version of rock music that's performed in church. "Nothing's Gonna Change Your Mind" is a nondescript pop ballad. "Promises"**** has a pretty memorable melody, though it gets pretty close to sounding like Coldplay or Keane. "Without A Kiss" is another pretty piano ballad that you'd hear in a film during a scene with some falling snow. "The Long Way Round" and "The Time Of Times" are two more of the better pop songs, but "Walk You Home" falls apart even at the beginning with some lazy and awkward lyric writing. The rest of the album is filled out with less memorable piano pop songs. The closing "One Last Dance"**** is an instantly memorable Ben Folds clone, though some lines are kinda corny, some awful, with the last of the references to American archetypes like Sandra Dee which plague this album, and another reference to the Boss.
"Swimming Pool" begins with this voice-over of Damon Gough getting all philosophical, and I shudder that this is how the album is going to be, but it's quick and the rest of the track is a pretty little piano ballad. The title song **** then is as straightforward as the previous song is tentative, and a bit grandiose, with the first reference to the seminal Bruce Springsteen album, but a decent sounding pop song anyway. I am a bit distressed that I can't recommend any one song on the album without qualification, but there are some decent hooks. How to describe "Welcome To The Overground" - it's like a song from a grade school musical, or it's the version of rock music that's performed in church. "Nothing's Gonna Change Your Mind" is a nondescript pop ballad. "Promises"**** has a pretty memorable melody, though it gets pretty close to sounding like Coldplay or Keane. "Without A Kiss" is another pretty piano ballad that you'd hear in a film during a scene with some falling snow. "The Long Way Round" and "The Time Of Times" are two more of the better pop songs, but "Walk You Home" falls apart even at the beginning with some lazy and awkward lyric writing. The rest of the album is filled out with less memorable piano pop songs. The closing "One Last Dance"**** is an instantly memorable Ben Folds clone, though some lines are kinda corny, some awful, with the last of the references to American archetypes like Sandra Dee which plague this album, and another reference to the Boss.
Comments