Saturday, February 22, 2014

SPOTIFY REVIEW: The Jezabels "The Brink" (Play It Again Sam)

             When I first began listening to this album, I could hear good things coming out of it.  There were names that I liked being furiously typed to try and use in this review.  Names like One-Eyed Doll, Polly Scattergood and Metric, which are names that in many ways it does not get much better than.

            It has these distinctive pop rock qualities that made me an instant fan… until I kept listening.

            After a bit of Debbie Gibson, we start drawing from the Britney Spears slow jam category and I begin to wonder if this is not some sort of mixed tape rather than an actual album.   It’s not that I mind a band exploring different styles on a single album, it’s just that The Jezabels seem to be doing so in a way that doesn’t flow as well as it perhaps should.
            I can almost envision them in a studio (or the like) saying, “Okay, and number X will be the country sounding one, and number Y will sound like Pink”, etc. 

            If the songs flowed a little bit better into one another this might feel like more of an accomplishment, but The Jezabels certainly dropped the ball where those others I noted certainly did not.   Sometimes, having a great synth pop rock album can be good, but being able to maintain that quality over ten to twelve songs can make it great.

            Abandoning your sound every couple of songs makes it feel like a cheap way to never have to commit to a specific style and as they cannot seem to stick with a sound I cannot commit to liking this either.  


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