And the thing that pains me the most is the lack of Sandra’s distinctive vocals. Jiggle is completely out of the picture (we’ll talk about that later), Hey last beautiful is indeed punkish (but so sad, I find modern punk boring as hell), there’s a nice little trippy electronic bridge in The long way home (but it’s so short and then it returns to the mandatory gangling) and Numen is indeed very pretty, but that’s not enough to hold a whole album together. There’s more maturity in Anne Claire than in this whole record put together and that was 15 years ago. Second, toning things down and repeating the same washed out generic pop-rock song seven times and calling it an album isn’t maturity, it’s just playing it incredibly safe. Dennis saw Stefan bending over and decided it would be fun to mimic fucking him, Stefan put a bra on his head and Sandra got on the shoulders of a very uncomfortable security guard and piggy backed him all the way to the audience and back. For one thing, I’ve seen them in live shows and they’re as silly as ever. I don’t consider this maturity and I’ll tell you why. Even if it does so in a less serious way, I come back to what I was saying in the previous review, that music has to evoke some sort of emotion, not just provide a noisy background that leaves you the same as you were before listening to it.Īpparently most listeners consider that if you don’t have bizarre lyrics and weird music, then you’re all grown up, as all opinions I read about this album include the word “mature”. If it’s just listening, then it needs to reach deeper than just the surface. I’m no cynic (well, maybe I am a little), but this kind of bouncy upbeat music works only if I want to dance to it. I listen to music to feel challenged, fascinated, moved, but here there is no emotion, no creativity, no technical prowess… and when music doesn’t excel neither here, nor there, what do you cling onto? What is there to make you give the record another spin and to differentiate that band from thousand of others who play the same monotonous colourless music? Same with the lyrics, maybe some people appreciate that they no longer sing about dicks and underwear, but leaving aside the fact that their goofy careless attitude is what made them fun and captivating, when the alternative is some naive childish “reach for the stars and don’t worry if you miss, cuz you’ll land on the moon” type of bullshit, I cannot help but yawn. It completely lacks the kick and it’s not because it’s not aggressive anymore, it’s because it’s very prudent and redundant.
Maybe some people appreciate the fact that Guano Apes are now nice and tame and play good old fashioned pop-rock without screaming and kooky rhythms, but personally I am bored to tears by this type of unadventurous repetitive music. What I hate the most about this is the shallow la-di-da-di-da that is present throughout most of the album. The lack of identity, however, is the smallest of the problems. With the exception of Like Somebody, Numen and Jiggle, all the songs are just one giant mash of something I would not remember the next day even after a dozen repetitions. This is an album that sounds nothing like what you’d expect from Guano Apes, but, worst of all, it’s just a collection of dull vanilla tracks. And considering I once listened to Dark passion play from Nightwish, that really is telling something. Sadly, had I never heard about this album at all, I wouldn’t have missed much, because this is one of the most disappointing things I ever laid my eyes/ears on. So since music has no expiration date and I love this band, there goes the Offline review. It’s been a year since this album was released, but apparently I live under a rock and haven’t heard about it until a few weeks ago. Artmania, 26-27.07.19, Large Square Sibiu
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