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UXL’s debut album has been causing quite a stir amongst certain
areas of the music industry. If you believe their press release then we
are listening to the future of British rock music. I hope not.
I liked debut single, ‘Beautiful Today’ mainly because I was
impressed by young vocalist John Tierney’s efforts, there’s
no denying he has a fantastic talent. Unfortunately it is a vehicle for
a fairly bland album that could have been produced by a number of Middle
America’s lumbering rock ‘giants’ such as Creed or 3
doors Down, only with a considerably larger amount of cheese grated on
top. ‘Beautiful Today’ is easily the best song on the album,
as it is out of the way quickly at track 3, what we are left with is Dad
rock downbeat songs like ‘Stranger’, which has a frankly hilarious
Kenny G saxophone in the bridge, nice.
One of the more interesting moments on the album is ‘This Life’,
with off beat drums and melodic guitars, it’s a passable effort,
its slightly let down by clichéd lyrics and possibly a little over-effort
from Tierney, taking his Scott Stapp hero worship to the next level.
Musically, the album is impressive, its not simple by any means, they
are all talented musicians, however there is a lack of identity to the
songs, I’m sure this will come with age as the band progress through
their career. They definitely found an excellent cohort in Mark Stuart,
producer for Wonderstuff, Phil Lynott and Magnum, his experience is evident,
production is slick and the sound is large enough to give a stadium-filling
aspect to UXL’s sound. Unfortunately there is still the matter of
ill-advised strings in ‘Change’ and synths in ‘Make
It’ that contribute to making potentially eclectic album come across
as pretentious and clichéd.
The future is theirs for the taking, the talent is there, if they can
find a sound that works for them then they may just be as big as they
claim. Maybe.
1/5
Review by Jakk |
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| Review
Score Code |
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- Top Cheese
- Brilliant
- Pretty damn good
- Ok I guess
-
What Was That? |
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