my very first review<\/a> for the Daily Vault. That album was terrible, and unfortunately more than a decade later, not much has changed. In fact, a great many of my complaints about that particular record could literally be copied, pasted and placed here. If you\u2019re keeping score at home, that\u2019s probably a bad sign for Life, Love & Hope<\/i>.<\/p>\nNow, one would assume that over the course of a decade, a musician could probably write a decent number of songs. Note that I didn\u2019t say the songs themselves were decent, but the actual number would have to be at least double digits, wouldn\u2019t you think? Life, Love & Hope<\/i>, released 11 years after its predecessor, contains three<\/i> songs previously recorded and released on Boston albums. That\u2019s three<\/i> re-recorded songs out a total of eleven (at least in this particular version of the album), leaving eight original compositions — less than one new song a year since the last Boston album. That is a shameful statistic, and only helps to further the point that perhaps, just perhaps, Scholz should hang up the Boston name. Apparently, as a \u201cband\u201d they have nothing left to offer.<\/p>\n
If you have listened to any of the great Boston songs, there were two elements that made the group what they were: the first was Tom Scholz\u2019s amazing production values, and the second was Brad Delp\u2019s lead vocals. Delp took songs like \u201cMore Than A Feeling\u201d and added another dimension to them. Sadly, Delp took his own life six years ago, and the hole he leaves behind is palpable. His swan song comes in the form of \u201cSail Away,\u201d a seemingly Hurricane Katrina-inspired jab at the government response to that crisis. Delp is the only saving grace to the track, which sounds like a Corporate America <\/i>outtake. It\u2019s a sad way for him to go out.<\/p>\n
In this age of digital music, where kids can create amazing sounding records in their garage, I cannot just fathom why Life, Love & Hope<\/i> sounds as poor as it does. Again, the man behind the album is a genius from MIT; Boston <\/i>and Don<\/i>\u2019t Look Back<\/i> sound just as pristine and fresh in 2014 as they did in the \u201870s. Why is there a muddled quality to this record? You can hear the elements of classic Boston there, but I liken listening to this album as looking through a lens that has fingerprint smudges all over it: you can make out the edges and get a rough idea what you\u2019re looking at, but it\u2019s out of focus and the details are completely lost. <\/p>\n
Boston<\/i> is one of this reviewer\u2019s Desert Island albums; it\u2019s a classic and wholly deserving of the legacy it left behind. That is why each new release from Boston, the band, is so disappointing. If there was something here worthwhile, it would be my pleasure to highlight for everyone and call attention to it. But once again, we\u2019re left with a terrible album. Hopefully this time it will be the last.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":31787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5689],"rating":[11203],"class_list":["post-43501","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-boston","rating-rating-d-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43501","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\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43501"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}