Farraday
Shade of Love

Greek duo Farraday kick of their debut Shade of Love with a one way ticket to Hollywood and I immediately starts to ask myself what could they possibly want to achieve there because I doubt this album or the quality these guys show on it will be enough to get noticed there. Lacklustre is a lovely word and it describes so well what this album is, it is a lacklustre version of the ever popular AOR genre. They show for all the clichés with everything from the keys to the catchy choruses but somehow they fail to make the listener enjoy what he/she hears. It seems that they either lack the production budget or the production skills required to make up-to-date AOR music.

I think the songs have potential, they are all built on a tried and tested foundation and they should be alright to enjoy if they have a decent enough production which they don’t. I find myself fairly unimpressed with what I hear. The songs are alright but the performances are slightly lacklustre and the production is just not good enough to do justice to the songs. One has to wonder a little bit if there was a slip up and we got a preproduction copy of the album, maybe it was better in the final edition. But honestly it is hard to shine in a world (or genre) of brilliant musical bands where the very good is the norm and the average is just short of greatness. These guys have a long way to go before reaching the norm or the average of the genre.

I believe these guys have quite a way to go before getting anywhere near the best, I think that the songs in general has potential. It is not bad and One Way Ticket to Hollywood that opens the album is a fairly likeable song even though I think it lack a little bit of finesse and energy. The overall feel of the album is that it is fairly okay and maybe the one really bitten by the teeth of the AOR genre can find this album quite alright. I think it works really well having it as a background noise when not really needing or wanting to really pay attention to it. But there are just so many albums that are a lot better when it comes to picking my albums to listen to.

Lacklustre is the word of the day and I will end this review by saying that an album of very good songs is a bit ruined by a lacklustre performance and production.

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