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| Track list: 1. Greatest Thoughts 2. Cover Your Tracks 3. I Am Leaving 4. Can't Sleep 5. I Wish I... 6. Coast 7. Does Anyone Love Me Now? 8. Doubtful Comforts 9. Rebecca 10. Imaginary Fights Running time: 45 minutes Released: 2008 |
For the second time in recent days, two things in a row with the same duration (assuming I don't slam Benjamine Clementine in between, at least). I have a vague recollection of why I bought this - some Amazon recommendation or other based on other female singer/songwriters. That's not much of a stretch, as it is a musical furrow that I have ploughed regularly in search of new material over the years, mostly coming up disappointed as not much lives up to early Thea Gilmore for me. I don't really recall how any of this goes though and I'd rather not prejudge it.
We open with a piano melody. I guess by default I was expecting guitar so that was a nice surprise. The vocal is a little too ethereal for my liking, floral in places it does not always mesh ideally with the stresses on the notes beneath. The melody has nice crescendo and diminuendo, filling out growing in volume and then retracting back to simple quiet notes. The volume (in terms of mental space) is well aided by the vocal, even if it it is a little too shrill here and there. I end up on the fence over the song, but I think the melodies show promise.
There is a longer lead in to Cover Your Tracks, a nice combination of keyboard and violins. Oh, wait; it wasn't a lead in, it was the entirety of a short tune. Huh. No. It was the lead out to Greatest Thoughts - I did not see that, and it didn't feel like a lead out. There appeared to be a clean break before the melodies struck up. Interesting. When Cover Your Tracks starts for real it is a spangly plucked melody, nice. The vocal is piercingly high when it starts but there is a good sense of emotion in Laura Groves' voice as it moves over the registers with the tune. After the initial line, which felt far too high to be comfortable I rather like the singing here. In places it swamps the guitar, but that just makes the plucking more special where it recaptures the ear. Again we have a weird break mid-piece and what seems to be a new melody strikes up, but here it is more clearly a bridge.
I think this style may wear on me over 45 minutes. Nice little moments, but a little same-y in album form, perhaps and three quarters of an hour is a long time for the higher-reaching strains of her voice to worry my tolerance for high pitches. I have been sleeping like garbage this week too, so my patience is somewhat eroded through tiredness. Nothing like a nice lie-in on a Saturday to redress that, but I shall not be getting one because there is fun to be had. Can't Sleep seems like an appropriate song to start up as I am digressing into my poor sleep cycle, though the song itself is fairly snooze inducing. A simple picked melody with a bit of string support, it is not particularly stirring and as much as the pattern is pretty, I can't stare at it for ever. I find my mind drifting away because of the twee-ness.
I think these songs are too long for what they are. 5.00, 5.16, 6.53 - its a long time for tunes that lack many layers or changes of tone. I didn't write anything specific about I Am Leaving but it was the best of the tracks to date because it got through itself before the construction got dull or the voice wore on me, thus leaving the soothing melodies - Groves constructs hooks nicely - to have their positive effect before moving on. To be fair, I Wish I... feels as though it is trying to justify the longer run and I am better inclined to it because it is piano-led and less reliant on pattern. Changes of tempo help break it up, giving us movements. I take a moment to check Blue Roses' similar artists on LastFM and scratch my head; there is very little Alessi's Ark here, and definitely no She Keeps Bees. Not enough This is the Kit either. For all that, and despite the 7 minutes, I Wish I... is very nice.
There is something here. As much as I am not particularly enamoured of her singing, with too many high notes for my liking, I do like bits and pieces of what Groves has done here. If there was a bit more depth to the tracks - a little more to back up the nice little central themes - they could be really very catchy and memorable. As it is the veneer feels a little thin, there is not quite enough to the tracks for them to catch in the way their hooks warrants. I like the way she uses her voice, even if I think most of it is pitched too high for my taste - when she changes pitch, tone and tempo there is a real warmth to it but most of the time it has that slight warble and coldness of strain in the pitch. The biggest disconnect is between the voice and the tune behind it though; it feels like one is drawing you in whilst the other is keeping you at arms length with all its might.
That dissonance is a shame; if the two elements were more in concert then one or two of the songs here might just be elevated. It just feels a little too cobbled together to be really impressive, too shy to make the most of its positive attributes. In general I prefer the piano tunes to the guitar numbers, just reflecting my bias for the keyboard. I find it easier to forgive the repetition that sometimes creeps into the hooks because it is slightly more disguised. Mostly I found this listen too slow. I started it tired and ended it tireder. I can't say I really enjoyed it, whilst at the same time not really disliking it either. I think that ends up rather damning it with my disengagement, which is a pity because - as I said before - there are some great little elements here. Not ones I will be coming back to revisit though.
We open with a piano melody. I guess by default I was expecting guitar so that was a nice surprise. The vocal is a little too ethereal for my liking, floral in places it does not always mesh ideally with the stresses on the notes beneath. The melody has nice crescendo and diminuendo, filling out growing in volume and then retracting back to simple quiet notes. The volume (in terms of mental space) is well aided by the vocal, even if it it is a little too shrill here and there. I end up on the fence over the song, but I think the melodies show promise.
There is a longer lead in to Cover Your Tracks, a nice combination of keyboard and violins. Oh, wait; it wasn't a lead in, it was the entirety of a short tune. Huh. No. It was the lead out to Greatest Thoughts - I did not see that, and it didn't feel like a lead out. There appeared to be a clean break before the melodies struck up. Interesting. When Cover Your Tracks starts for real it is a spangly plucked melody, nice. The vocal is piercingly high when it starts but there is a good sense of emotion in Laura Groves' voice as it moves over the registers with the tune. After the initial line, which felt far too high to be comfortable I rather like the singing here. In places it swamps the guitar, but that just makes the plucking more special where it recaptures the ear. Again we have a weird break mid-piece and what seems to be a new melody strikes up, but here it is more clearly a bridge.
I think this style may wear on me over 45 minutes. Nice little moments, but a little same-y in album form, perhaps and three quarters of an hour is a long time for the higher-reaching strains of her voice to worry my tolerance for high pitches. I have been sleeping like garbage this week too, so my patience is somewhat eroded through tiredness. Nothing like a nice lie-in on a Saturday to redress that, but I shall not be getting one because there is fun to be had. Can't Sleep seems like an appropriate song to start up as I am digressing into my poor sleep cycle, though the song itself is fairly snooze inducing. A simple picked melody with a bit of string support, it is not particularly stirring and as much as the pattern is pretty, I can't stare at it for ever. I find my mind drifting away because of the twee-ness.
I think these songs are too long for what they are. 5.00, 5.16, 6.53 - its a long time for tunes that lack many layers or changes of tone. I didn't write anything specific about I Am Leaving but it was the best of the tracks to date because it got through itself before the construction got dull or the voice wore on me, thus leaving the soothing melodies - Groves constructs hooks nicely - to have their positive effect before moving on. To be fair, I Wish I... feels as though it is trying to justify the longer run and I am better inclined to it because it is piano-led and less reliant on pattern. Changes of tempo help break it up, giving us movements. I take a moment to check Blue Roses' similar artists on LastFM and scratch my head; there is very little Alessi's Ark here, and definitely no She Keeps Bees. Not enough This is the Kit either. For all that, and despite the 7 minutes, I Wish I... is very nice.
There is something here. As much as I am not particularly enamoured of her singing, with too many high notes for my liking, I do like bits and pieces of what Groves has done here. If there was a bit more depth to the tracks - a little more to back up the nice little central themes - they could be really very catchy and memorable. As it is the veneer feels a little thin, there is not quite enough to the tracks for them to catch in the way their hooks warrants. I like the way she uses her voice, even if I think most of it is pitched too high for my taste - when she changes pitch, tone and tempo there is a real warmth to it but most of the time it has that slight warble and coldness of strain in the pitch. The biggest disconnect is between the voice and the tune behind it though; it feels like one is drawing you in whilst the other is keeping you at arms length with all its might.
That dissonance is a shame; if the two elements were more in concert then one or two of the songs here might just be elevated. It just feels a little too cobbled together to be really impressive, too shy to make the most of its positive attributes. In general I prefer the piano tunes to the guitar numbers, just reflecting my bias for the keyboard. I find it easier to forgive the repetition that sometimes creeps into the hooks because it is slightly more disguised. Mostly I found this listen too slow. I started it tired and ended it tireder. I can't say I really enjoyed it, whilst at the same time not really disliking it either. I think that ends up rather damning it with my disengagement, which is a pity because - as I said before - there are some great little elements here. Not ones I will be coming back to revisit though.
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