Tracks: My Love, Her Beautiful Disguise, Anyhow, Another Sunday Afternoon, Nothing Changes, The Day The Angels Came Down, Ellouise, She's Out Of This World, It's Your Day, Perfect Life, Schizo Kid
Availability: free of charge(other than a stamped addressed envelope). Email Alan at Alan.whittaker@virgin.net
Verdict (& Rating ): Too laid back for my tastes ( 64%)
When I first receive a new CD, the first thing I do is put it in the CD player and have a quick listen to each of the tracks, just to get a taste for the album, even if I don't have time to listen to the whole album. In this process 'in your face hard rock' tends to make to best initial impressions. Whereas, gentler faire such as "Out Of This World", leaves me a little disappointed.
After this initial listen, it was a while before I returned to this album. My wife happened to be in the room when I was listening again. This time we both thought the opening track, "My Love", was good, but the rest of the album failed to live up to promising start.
It wasn't until I had the time sit down and have a 'good listen' to the album that I changed my mind about the album and I began to see it positive attributes. It is hard to describe Alan's style of music. Words I could bandy about are soft rock, singer/songwriter, laid back etc. There is a 70s/early 80s pop-rock feel to the material.
That opener that I mentioned earlier, "My Love", is a sparse piano track that initially conjures up visions of Sytx, but heads off in a poppier direction. It is not the sort of opener that grabs you from the off, but about half way through, you might just be thinking "this isn't bad". "Her Beautiful Disguise", "Anyhow" and "Another Sunday Afternoon" all have that 70s soft rock vibe with "Anyhow" being the best of the trio. When listening to "Nothing Changes" I'm reminded of a song (but I can't remember the title) by the Alan Parson's Project, especially the rhythm section.
So far, so good. Then comes "The Day The Angels Came Down" which reminds me of the crass Pogues/Kirsty McCall Christmas ditty "A New York Fairytale"(again I'm having problems thinking of the song title). Unfortuantely this "faux pas" is followed by three undistinguished ballads, which may just have been OK separately, but don't cut it in sequence.
We have to wait until the penultimate track to find a track that falls into the rock rather than the pop arena. "Perfect Life" has a vaguely progressive feel to it, albeit in a latter day Marillion kind of a way rather than a full blown prog workout. "Schizo Kid" is yet another ballad, but this time an effective one that closes the album well.
This album was really a little too laid back for my tastes. This becomes especially noticeable when the start of the second half of the album is a series of ballads which failed to capture my imagination. This fact combined with a track that reminded me of that dreadful Pogues/Kirsty McCall Xmas tune sealed the albums rather ordinary rating from me. That is my take of things, you can investigate for yourself at www.mp3.com . As you'll see at the top of the review, this album is available free of charge to anyone who sends Alan a SAE, which makes it worthy of further investigation!!!!
