Okay, I’ve kept quiet long enough.<\/p>\n
I didn’t say a thing when the Backstreet Boys or 98\u00b0 came
\nout on the market — because, frankly, I’ve liked what I’ve heard
\nfrom them. (Whether teeny-bopper music is your cup of tea or not,
\nyou have to admit the Backstreet Boys are excellent harmony
\nsingers.) I even kept my mouth shut about ‘N Sync, who I’ve not
\nenjoyed as much. I thought, “Hey, someone’s having fun with this
\nmusic. Who am
\nI<\/i> to judge?” (What am I
\nsaying<\/i>?!? I’m a friggin’
\nmusic critic<\/i>!)<\/p>\n
That whole philosophy went out the window when I listened to
\nfirstlove, a four-piece group out of Germany. Their independent
\nrelease
\nI Just Can’t Get Enough<\/i> has a few moments on it which
\nsuggest they could carve a niche out for themselves in top 40
\nradio, but in the end, they come across as another cookie-cutter
\nwanna-be band whose chops are second-rate. (I won’t even begin
\ndiscussion on why a grown man would go under the name of
\n“Peanut”.)<\/p>\n
Problem number one with this band is pure and simple: they don’t
\nharmonize nearly enough. When they do, it’s quite pleasant.
\nRegrettably, it often seems that their vocals tend to overlap each
\nother, creating more of a sonic mush than a musically rich texture.
\nTracks like “More Better Days,” “Perfect Boyfriend” and the title
\ntrack all fall under this trap — and these are tracks which could
\nhave been stellar, at least in this genre.<\/p>\n
The second trap is the inclusion of four — count ’em,
\nfour<\/i> — versions of the song “Freaky.” The original is lame
\nenough — and if the lyrics in one portion of the song say what I
\nthink they say, well… let’s just leave it at this: it’s a line
\nyou wouldn’t expect to hear in a teeny-bopper song. (I’d like to
\nconfirm the lyric, but that portion of firstlove’s Web site keeps
\ncrashing on me.) But, no,
\nI Just Can’t Get Enough<\/i> is padded with three additional
\nmixes of the song, none of which add anything to the original at
\nall. It’s enough to make you dive for the remote control.<\/p>\n
All of this said, tracks like “Gotta Get Movin,” “Smile” and
\n“Believe” do leave the glint of hope that firstlove will need to
\nsurvive in such a competitive field. Musically, they need to
\nharmonize more and put some focus into the instrumentation (though,
\nadmittedly, the band had very little say in this aspect). They
\nalready have some foothold in the market, with spots on shows like
\nJenny Jones and getting Disney to use some of their songs on cable
\nprogramming. Whether this will be enough for them to stake their
\nplace in the genre is yet to be seen.<\/p>\n
\nI Just Can’t Get Enough<\/i> holds out the hope of better things
\nto come, though this disc ends up being far too formulatic to be
\nanything but typical of the genre. Less padding and more attention
\nto the final product could be what the band needs — but until
\nthen, sorry, but I’ve had enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6403],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-36743","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-firstlove","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36743"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36743"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}