In a bit of symbolism not seen since George Michaels burned his leather jacket and blew up his iconic jukebox all the while not bothering to show up in his Freedom ’90 video, for the first single from Heroes & Thieves, Vanessa Carlton drove her iconic piano into traffic only for it to get run over. The big difference between the two artists though was Michaels’ video was a statement that he was no longer beholden to the poppy image forced upon him and the video and accompanying song was a declaration of his new artistic freedom.
Carlton on the other hand was just bitter that her record label dropped her after her sophomore album bombed. The music on the new album hasn’t changed much with the label change even with horrible rap producer Irv Gotti helping out behind the boards. The only influence of his you can hear on the album is the drumline style percussions that open and close out the first single Nolita Fairytale. Instead we get more piano and strings driven introspective tunes.
In fact the new album seems much like a mash-up of her first two with songs having a more polished to them and accessible melodies like on her debut Be Not Nobody with more moodier lyrics like on the follow up Harmonium. Same as the second album, Stephan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind, helped write a few songs and crappy songwriter extraordinaire Linda Perry of 4 Non-Blondes help pen three tracks which are not surprisingly the most overwrought and skippable songs on the album even with Stevie Nicks adding harmonies on The One.
Even being an improvement the album is mired by not having that one big hit to get Carlton back on the charts. Despite the melodramatics of Perry on her songs, the rest of the album just sounds like they could have been the filler between A Thousand Miles and Ordinary Day from the first album. Hopefully Carlton took notes from Nicks on how to branch out musically but still have a signature sound on her next album.
Song to Download - Home
Heroes & Thieves gets a
![Terror Alert Level: Elevated [YELLOW]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6-iVFV0hXCTSYP16K_V0Rrxp3GqFrtBIJKeTUyQ2LpxZQ9XKHFj6QGtqqa7oxhLadLV8vUj8R84AftD8IKUSfN0u_u0CYDtJwhrpCPN2DBWquAIDv0jbVlhZL0mDFKlPKluGyxw/s400/small_elevated.png)
on my Terror Alert Scale.
No comments:
Post a Comment