Champlin Williams Friestedt
II

Some five years ago I (and several other reviewers) wrote positive things about the debut album for this trio, therefore I will probably be forgiven for having some hopes for this one. The new album is cleverly entitled II, no other band has done that before, so it is very original. And the cover is rather terrific, or was it terrible? The cover is worse than the first one, and that wasn’t exactly great. We should not judge it by the cover though, and inside that cover we find ten tracks of melodic rock music.

Melodic rock, AOR, westcoast are probably descriptions that could be used for this album, you can use Chicago as a reference, a more tired version of Chicago. And a more or less comatose Toto is probably another thing you could use for reference. It is the same kind of style as the previous album, but I would say that it is slower and less energetic than that previous album. It isn’t too much variation through the album and originality isn’t really a word that can be associated with this album. The production is very good though, the sound and vocals are quite great.

Generic is a word that comes to mind when I play through this one, forgettable is another one. It is a generic and forgettable album and fairly disappointing in comparison with the previous album. Tired is another thing that comes to mind when I listen to it and now that I write this text. With such good musicians I think that we could expect more, more energy, more depth and more original thinking. Why not try something outside the box instead of this generic stuff? It feels like they are only trying to enlarge the bank account using their names and the music they have done before with no real attempt to make good music; it sounds like they do not really care about the music.

I wrote that you couldn’t dislike the debut, this one isn’t easy to dislike either, I mostly dislike that it is soulless but there isn’t much wrong with the music that is quite okay. It would have been brilliant with a more alive and more exciting album, but in the end, I think that all we are getting is a well-produced piece of nothing.

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