For the first time, Better Than Ezra frontman and renowned songwriter Kevin Griffin is going it alone. He deviates from the traditional Ezra sound for a fresh pop sheen that seems to work fairly well for him. <\/p>\n
Opening track \u201cAre We Still Here?\u201d has some of the freshest guitar work I\u2019ve heard coming from him in almost forever. It\u2019s a nice change of pace for the standard, traditional AOR sound that Ezra worked with for 20 years. In fact, the last two or so minutes of the track are a dynamic guitar and piano battle that really stand out and make you go wow.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, not everything here is that glorious. \u201cWhen I Metcha\u201d sounds like a weak pop track from 2005 and doesn\u2019t do much to become memorable. Seeing as he\u2019s become a go-to songwriter for pop and country groups, it\u2019s almost obvious that he would go in an overall poppier direction than what Ezra mined forever. \u201cHacienda\u201d is a bit better, something beachy and bright, so not all is completely lost.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo One Makes It Out Alive\u201d and \u201cAnyone Ever\u201d come across as more well-rounded pop songs, particularly the latter, which is something more akin to his past. That\u2019s better than trying to completely reinvent yourself for no real reason whatsoever. Kudos for knowing what makes you great and interesting and not changing everything about your signature sound.<\/p>\n
Overall, this is a mixed bag of music; there\u2019s some really great stuff like \u201cAnyone Ever\u201d and \u201cAre We Still Here?\u201d and there\u2019s other things that will make you scratch your head in disbelief. But for a first-time solo effort, there\u2019s a lot of stuff here to be admired. Griffin shows he\u2019s still more than capable of cranking out great songs, even if they\u2019re for himself and not for Barenaked Ladies, Howie Day, or Sugarland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":33913,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10437],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-45740","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-kevin-griffin","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45740","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\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45740"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}