Live falls short of credibility
By Jason Kosareff
Daily Forty-Niner
Live's new album, "The Distance to Here," is so saturated with sentimentalism
and melodrama that it falls flat on its face under the weight of its own
sorrow, despite being an otherwise strong musical effort.
Singer Edward Kowalczyk's lyrics go into the ridiculous. In fact, the
lyrics are worse than the ramblings of a tenured professor.
It's the musical equivalent to Goethe's ultra-depressing "Sorrow's of
Young Werther."
But, where Goethe was among the first to document the melodramatic yearning
of an oversensitive adolescent, Kowalczyk does nothing more than put new
twists on some old clichés.
Kowalczyk complicates every lyric. The first line on the first song
of the album, "Dolphin's Cry," sets the stage for the melodrama that's
follows.
"The way you're bathed in light/reminds me of that night/God laid me
down into your rose garden of trust."
"Rose garden of trust?" What the hell is that?
On what is perhaps the best track on the album, "The Distance," the
lyrics get only worse.
"Let him come to the city/let him find his lucky penny/let him put it
in his pocket/let him shake it all around." Kowalczyk sings them like he's
reading from the "Revelations to John."
Nothing Live is trying to say warrants the excessive use of poetry.
There should be a law against that sort of language abuse.
The music is just as overdramatic as Kowalczyk's clumsy lyrics, but
has a higher quality with more thought put into its structure and flow.
With consummate passion on "Where Fishes Go," Kowalczyk sings, "I couldn't
take it anymore/so I went back to the sea/cuz' that's where fishes go/when
fishes get the sense to flee/breathe, BREATHE!"
Absurd thoughts like that permeate the entire album, which makes listening
a chore. Kowalczyk, like most writers of popular music, is obsessed with
"romance culture."
Countless other albums dedicated entirely to the theme of romance and
breaking up must make it a challenge to write something unique.
Perhaps that is why Kowalczyk describes one woman as a "maker of children
who weep for love."
Whether just bad poetic judgment, "The Distance to Here" falls short
of sincerity and credibility. |
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