The Waxbills, Hard to Lose

I've been sitting on this disc for a while. I gave it a quick listen a few months back, pulled a song or 2 to put in rotation on Long Beach Radio and set it aside... not because I didn't like it. I just didn't have time to really listen.

Now that I find myself with a little more time I'm sitting down with it again, in a more sensative way.  Now that I take the time to listen I wonder why it was so "easy" to pick some of the tracks for the radio station.  The whole album is so radio friendly that it's almost embarassing.

The album opens with a U2 song.... not a cover but a song that you could hear in the middle of a familiar, contemporary U2 album and not bat an eyelash.  If the whole album went on that way it would be a problem. Not because I don't like U2 but because I'd just go put in Joshua Tree and forget about the Waxbills.

Luckily we walk into a few different directions through to album.  We spend a little time in Tom Petty's recording studio with "Broken Girl", have a bit of a Neil Diamond moment in "Valentine".  It all sounds familiar.... which is great for radio programming but not likely to cause it to spend a lot of time in my car's CD player.... oh yeah we do come back to the U2 for a bit too.... Where's Joshua Tree?

I do enjoy the "60s-ness" of much of the album.  "Roller Coaster Man" especially has me envisioning gogo girls and tambourines.  "Taste" and "High Street" have a classic punk feeling, think MC5 or Clash... maybe even some Lou Reed but aren't as convincing doppelgangers as the other tracks are to their originals.

The album reminds me of the Jet album from a decade or so back "Get Born"... that was all BTO, Beatles and Fleetwood Mac songs repackaged as sound alikes.... That said, it did really well, probably provided the capital for a lot of great parties and I still find it amoung a lot of peoples "in the car" CDs.

The playing is great, the singing right-on... the fact that the songs are so effective at delivering up nuances of specific artists is a testament to the writing/ production skills.  If it hasn't already I can see this album being hugely successful in the film soundtrack world or licensed to advertisers like mad.

I want to like it, and I suppose I do... I just don't feel pressured by it. I don't feel like I'm hearing anything I haven't before.  There is no cutting edge to it. Timeless but somehow stale.

Thanks for reading and happy listening,