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Carbon Leaf
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Love Loss Hope Repeat
Vanguard Records
Release: 9/12/2006
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Rated:
Review by:
Jonathan Shipley
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The more I listen to Carbon Leaf's new album the more I get a little
pissed off. Why? It's not that it's a bad album, it's just not good
enough. One can tell that the Virginia-based Celtic-influenced
band is simply doing what it's always done - made a serviceable
rock n' roll album that'll appeal to the masses. Listening to it again
I know they can do better and perhaps they know it too, they just
want solid play on adult contemporary radio rather than push their
music and musicianship to something better.
Following their breakout album, Indian Summer,
featuring one of my daughter's favorite songs, "Raise the Roof,"
Love Loss Hope Repeat continues the band's efforts
to make polite engaging music that you can listen to when you're in
traffic or on the big speakers of a department store as you look to
buy a new cardigan.
With guitarists Terry Clark and Carter Gravatt, bassist Jordan
Medas, drummer Scott Milstead and vocalist Barry Privett, Carbon
Leaf, in their seventh album (and the second on a label not their
own), sounds a little like Dave Matthews Band (Virginians
themselves), a little David Gray, a tinge of Howie Day. The tracks
are produced clearly and flawlessly with Privett's silky smooth
voice. One hopes that the tracks will show a little more grit, a little
more sweat and toil on the album than what it has. The grit is
wiped clean.
The songs are nice. Yes, there are good vibes and plenty of quality
tunes, but the tracks begin to sound like one another and before
too long you're thinking, "Come on Carbon Leaf, sing something
else! Something a little off track!" When that happens, when they
push themselves, Carbon Leaf will go from serviceable to super. |
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