{"id":41455,"date":"2009-04-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-14T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/fortunes-favour\/"},"modified":"2009-04-14T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-14T00:00:00","slug":"fortunes-favour","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/fortunes-favour\/","title":{"rendered":"Fortune’s Favour"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m having a crisis of personal faith. Maybe it\u2019s me. Maybe, somehow, I\u2019ve failed; I\u2019m just not good enough anymore. Because it couldn\u2019t be that Great Big Sea, one of the constants in my severely chaotic universe, could be slipping? Could it? COULD IT?<\/o:p><\/p>\n

*brief pause to take a tranquilizer*<\/o:p><\/p>\n

*deep breath*<\/o:p><\/p>\n

OK. Maybe it\u2019s not me. Maybe Great Big Sea\u2019s new disc, Fortune\u2019s Favour<\/i>, just isn\u2019t quite…I don\u2019t know if I can say this…maybe it\u2019s just not as good as some of their releases have been in the past. Maybe there are parts of it that are almost \u2013 dare I say it? \u2013 mediocre? Has Great Big Sea jumped the shark?<\/o:p><\/p>\n

I hope not, but Fortune\u2019s Favour<\/i> doesn\u2019t make me very hopeful.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The hardest part of this for me is to identify what just doesn\u2019t work. The musicianship is still great, the production and engineering is tight \u2013 what fails on FF<\/i> is the songs. Every single track on this disc seems like it\u2019s a derivative of a past GBS song. \u201cEngland\u201d sounds like \u201cCaptain Wedderburn.\u201d \u201cLong Lost Love\u201d could be \u201cSummer\u201d redux. \u201cDream To Live\u201d could be any one of a dozen upbeat GBS songs. There seems to be a certain fire and originality missing here that leaves this unsatisfying on some level. Added to that, that there are a couple of songs that are just…not right; I don\u2019t know what possessed the boys to record \u201cOh Yeah,\u201d but someone should tell them they are not Winger. \u201cHeart Of Stone\u201d is almost as disappointing; it puts me in mind of a music box that someone hasn\u2019t wound up enough, meandering along to a maudlin conclusion.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Then there are the songs that are good; good enough to make you wonder what the hell happened to the rest of the CD. \u201cWalk On The Moon,\u201d \u201cHere And Now,\u201d the haunting \u201cBanks Of Newfoundland\u201d \u2013 this is the GBS I know and love. \u201cCompany Of Fools\u201d is a delight, and \u201cDance Dance\u201d actually has some Celtic music in it. \u201cStraight To Hell\u201d closes the album on an upbeat, defiant note, and makes me want to throw my fists in the air.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

I am reminded of what Dave said from my review of The Hard And The Easy<\/i>, that GBS had lost their roots; I\u2019m beginning to wonder if he\u2019s right. Fortune\u2019s Favour<\/i> really isn\u2019t either favored or good fortune; if anything, it\u2019s half a good disc that disappoints badly with the other half.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":29840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6007],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-41455","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-great-big-sea","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41455","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\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41455"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41455"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}