Bill Champlin and Wunderground
Bleeding Secrets

Bill Champlin and Wunderground offers some Bleeding Secrets to anyone willing to listen, or something like that. It is Bill Champlin who has joined forces with Tamara Champlin and Gary Falcone, along with them there are several other skilled musicians making up the ranks of this project. You probably know Bill from Chicago with a very recogniseable voice, but they are all well-known musicians making up the ranks of this band. Bleeding Secrets is the debut album, it came to me as a digipak that isn’t exactly looking the most exciting I have seen, but I guess you can call it fairly okay. So what about the music then, they certainly have the competence but what about the music then?

If you know Chicago, then you will have a decent frame of reference for this album. Tamara Chaplin offers more depth with some female vocals, even though I don’t think she sings that great on most of the tracks she sings, she does really well in one of the tracks. Besides Tamara I think the vocals are good over the album, decent variation as well. But I do think the album is too long, could definitely have been shorter, ten tracks rather than thirteen perhaps. I like the sound; the production is really good and will certainly please those enjoying the melodic rock music. I think westcoast is another way used to describe the kind of music we get to hear, or AOR perhaps, a bit of R&B as well, a relatively diverse style of music I think even though it doesn’t really break new ground.

Likeable music, that is the reflection I make after playing this album over and over. The tracks are good, no real weak track but most where we hear Tamara Champlin are a bit dreary, there is no real passion in the voice I think. The track Dreaming of Chagall is good though, one of the best of the album. Imaginary Friend is the best track of the album though, that is a rather brilliant ballad that has more or less everything, great chorus, great vocals, string and everything. It is an excellent track. So there is something that makes you want to return to the album, the problem is though that the rest of the album can be described as fairly forgettable.

Like my imaginary friends I do like the track Imaginary Friend quite a lot, it is really great and it makes the album feel more special than it is. The problem is that behind that great track and perhaps the other one I mentioned the tracks are okay but not particularly memorable. I guess we can conclude that Champlins and friends has put together a rather solid album with some excellent music but it is not really an album that will go down in history as one of the greater albums ever made.

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