Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

I still am not quite sure what I want to say about this album.  I hadn’t heard of Adam Marsland before, and considering this was a 'Greatest Hits’ album, I was excited to listen to it and to see what it was I’d been missing.  I don’t think I was missing much.

And I tried hard to like the album, appreciate what it was he had to say with his music and the message he was trying to get across.  And now, to some extent, I do.  I understand and appreciate the amount of time, effort and money that goes into funding a music career and how difficult a business it is to break into.  So I give Adam and his extensive band a lot of credit for having to drive and determination to make music.  Especially using instruments like the glockenspiel.  Marsland employs other uncommon instruments that are often seen in the indie scene (and Mick Jagger’s hands) like the tambourine and the triangle.  For incorporating those instruments into his music as well as he does is a testament to his understanding of musical composition and a fantastic ear. 

That said, I was surprised.  First, by the vocals.  I’m not saying I’m Celine Dion or anything, I will barely karaoke without at least three good drinks in me.  But I felt that for an artist with a ‘Greatest Hits’ album, his vocals weren’t what I was expecting.  It sounded more like he was talking an octave higher and drawing out his words to string them together smoothly.  When I think of other ‘Greatest Hits’ I have a certain level of expectation, in everything, and I thought that the vocals fell short of them.  (To be fair, I’m told very often I have very high expectations in general, but I thought this album fell short of them by quite a bit). 

It wasn’t just the vocals that bothered me, though.  So don’t jump on me for bashing Adam’s vocals and his vocals alone.  It takes more than one ant to ruin a picnic.  Maybe it’s because I was an English major.  Maybe it’s because I’m obsessed with words, the right ones for just the right place in a line.  But I didn’t enjoy his lyrics.  Which is, I think, a big part of why I didn’t much like his voice, because I am fairly open to unique vocals (Placebo, The Servant, The Sex Pistols, for example).  The lyrics seemed a bit overdone to me.  A bit cliché.  I understand how hard it is to get one’s point across clearly and succinctly (I am a writer, after all), but it seemed to me that Adam Marsland often bit off more than he could chew.  An emotion, a moment, a life lesson that was meant to be imparted to the listen often got lost among too-complex comparisons or juxtapositions that leaves the listener scratching their head.  They fall just shy of clarity, so you almost understand what he’s saying, but not really. 

This is not an album I would go out and buy.  Maybe I need to re-evaluate how high my musical expectations are, but I felt that as a ‘Greatest Hits’ album, it fell short of the greatness I was expecting from it.