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1 out of 10
There was once a band called Northstar. They released a frankly brilliant debut album called 'Is This Thing Loaded?', however, it was plagued by piss-poor production that kind of made it sound that you were listening to it through a sock. Northstar then released their follow up called 'Pollyanna', arguably one of my favourite albums of all time. This time the production was perfect, the vocals came to the fore, allowing the lyrics to really shine. The guitars were polished but still had enough bite to them to not seem over-produced.
This progression was down to super-producer Matt Squire, who also produced this album. Unfortunately he got it all a bit wrong on this. What he should have done, was urinate on the mixing desk, and burn all the master copies, because this is some of the biggest tosh I have ever heard.
This saccharine sweet, vacuous attempt at pop-rock may have actually given me aural diabetes. The music itself is so lifeless and phoned in that it seems like it was written to be played in elevators. Every song on the album sounds exactly the same and blends together into one homogeneous blob of blandness. But this is true for quite a few bands in this genre, and really that would only justify a score of 3 or 4 out of 10. But there is reason why this (scrapes) a 1 out of 10: the lyrics. Oh god the lyrics.
Anyone who has read one of my reviews before (hi Mum!) knows that I am pretty picky when it comes to lyrics. So just to give you a flavour of the 'talent' on display here, let's sample the outro chorus of the frankly shit 'Dakota':
"Oh Dakota, I know our love is new.
I barely know you.
I've fallen over you.
It's the way you do the things you do
that make me fall in love with you.
Oh Dakota, are you in love with me too.
I'm in love with you, are you in love with me too?"
Now as somewhat of a novice songwriter myself, I feel I am pretty comfortable with the basic 'do's and don'ts' of song-writing. I always remember that you shouldn't try and use really simple rhymes all the time, and also that rhyming a word with itself doesn't ever work. Looking at the above, it seems that all this pretty sensible advice has been thrown out of the window as the rhymes are "New, You, You, Do, You, Too and Too". I have seen better lyrics on absolutepunk.net forums and that shit is terrible.
Rarely does music make me angry, but this album succeeded. I always have to defend the music I listen to to my friends. I say: 'No you're wrong, it's not all wimpy and boring, with crappy lyrics about relationships and girls all the time', but this album just highlighted that actually, people have a point.
This is the antithesis of good music, this is a fourteen year old girl's journal masquerading as music over a soundtrack of greyness, this is just flat out abysmal. And to be fair, it's not A Rocket To The Moon's fault, fair play to them, at least they get to live out their dreams, I blame the record label for putting this faeces out.
Terrible.
Listen: www.myspace.com/arockettothemoon
Tracklist:
1. Annabelle
2. Mr Right
3. She's Killing Me
4. On A Lonely Night
5. Dakota
6. Life Of The Party
7. Like We Used To
8. Where Did You Go
9. Sometimes
10. Baby Blue Eyes
11. Give A Damn
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