Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

You may not have heard of II Big. If you haven’t you might be surprised to discover that Face in the Glass is their eighth release. II Big is a working band, having toured with rock icons from the 1970s such as Foghat, journeyman bands that at one point filled arenas and can still get ass in the seat on a regular basis. II Big has been selling its CDs off of bandstands and the like for near nigh a decade and doing fairly well at it --- when they started I doubt that they ever thought that doing so would become the music industry model for the 21st Century --- and Face in the Glass will undoubtedly please those folks who have been following them for lo these many years.

The subtitle of Face in the Glass is “Brand New Classic Rock,” a statement which I didn’t really get until the third or fourth time through this disc. I think of “classic rock” as late 1950s, early 1960s music, The Drifters, Eddie Cochran, The Beatles, Fats Domino, The (early) Rolling Stones. Of course, depending on your age, that definition, fluid in any event, is going to change. II Big aims its classic rock definition at a period a bit later than I would. Accordingly, what you get in Face in the Glass is a bunch of original tunes and one cover (Wooden Ships by Crosby Stills & Nash, as well as less famously recorded by Jefferson Airplane), through a pre-Michael McDonald Doobie Brothers filter with, perhaps, a pinch of Alabama thrown in. To their credit, Wooden Ships is not the best track on the CD. That honor could be given to Pack of Wolves (a subtle smack at collection agencies and telephone solicitors), Vegas, or the title track. This isn’t boogie music or metal; it’s more of a mid-road jam, some of which will get you on your feet without necessarily having to break a sweat. It’s pleasant --- there’s really not a bad track on the disc --- but alas, there’s nothing especially memorable either. You can listen to all of Face in the Glass without wanting to turn it off, but by the end of the CD you might have a problem remembering any particular song over another.

My problem, I guess, is that I heard Listen To The Music a time or two too often on the radio. Listen To The Music by The Doobies was the Susudio of the 1970s; you could turn on the radio day or night and hear it over and over and over. And, unfortunately, a lot of Face in the Glass sounds like “Listen” - era Doobies. It sounds better, for the most part; but it still sounds like it. A lot of folks might say, “Well hey, what’s wrong with that?!” to which I say, “Well, nothing, really. What ever works.” And it works well for II Big. There’s nothing here that will wake you up and lift your soul; however, there’s a fairly large audience of folks out there who like there music gently shaken and stirred, and I would direct them, unhesitatingly, to Face in the Glass.