A Town and Two Cities, the debut album from Your Vegas, is a cleanly pieced and polished collection of epic, en vogue, and radio friendly Brit pop rock. The songwriting is worldly, appealing, and personal, but the songs themselves come across as uninspired, predictable, and safe. Making one wonder if the band will stand out independently or fall into a rotation within a saturated genre?
The songs are successfully built around variations of the verse, chorus, verse format with such science it’s hard to gage any real sense of Your Vegas’ individuality. Undeniably, this talented quintet from Leeds, England has a knack for aching sing-a-long choruses and attractively packaged songs that are instantly likable. And it is enough to like the songs for being par. But there is a severe lack of dimension for the listener interested in hearing more than the latest variation on a pop rock song passed down from the last decade.
Again, there is no real fault in this. It’s simply a matter of individual taste. But there are recurring trademark symptoms of this formulaic music that is blatant and obvious. The pop rock format by rote superimposes the vocals with overt audibility to the forefront thereby diminishing the actual music to uneven accompaniment. Which benefits the war heavy “The Way the War Was won” and “Salvador.” There’s the choice of the melodic falsetto chorus; instituted on the apologetic “In My Head” which hooks the verses of the song into unmemorable fodder, weakening the song considerably. Then the mixing is distributed among the instrumentation so evenly one can’t help but feeling the dull edge of digital editing. Dullness in the vein that it robs the listener from feeling any punch that these attentively crafted songs could deliver. Instead the music comes off soulless, with just enough bells and whistles to make the songs shinny and attractive to market. Take “Troubled Times,” it begins with muted Buggles-like intro verse that flows into a preview chorus that feeds into the full band second verse…to the grandiose finale. The irony isn’t lost on the song’s theme of lamenting opportunities lost.
Listening to the album as a whole makes one wonder if the yearning and passion of earnest pop rock has become such a predictably pedestrian form that it will negate even its own immediate appeal. The question then changes from: “Is Your Vegas built to last or are they only for right now?” to “Is Your Vegas even for right now?”
Aaron Simms
http://www.yourvegasmusic.com/
The songs are successfully built around variations of the verse, chorus, verse format with such science it’s hard to gage any real sense of Your Vegas’ individuality. Undeniably, this talented quintet from Leeds, England has a knack for aching sing-a-long choruses and attractively packaged songs that are instantly likable. And it is enough to like the songs for being par. But there is a severe lack of dimension for the listener interested in hearing more than the latest variation on a pop rock song passed down from the last decade.
Again, there is no real fault in this. It’s simply a matter of individual taste. But there are recurring trademark symptoms of this formulaic music that is blatant and obvious. The pop rock format by rote superimposes the vocals with overt audibility to the forefront thereby diminishing the actual music to uneven accompaniment. Which benefits the war heavy “The Way the War Was won” and “Salvador.” There’s the choice of the melodic falsetto chorus; instituted on the apologetic “In My Head” which hooks the verses of the song into unmemorable fodder, weakening the song considerably. Then the mixing is distributed among the instrumentation so evenly one can’t help but feeling the dull edge of digital editing. Dullness in the vein that it robs the listener from feeling any punch that these attentively crafted songs could deliver. Instead the music comes off soulless, with just enough bells and whistles to make the songs shinny and attractive to market. Take “Troubled Times,” it begins with muted Buggles-like intro verse that flows into a preview chorus that feeds into the full band second verse…to the grandiose finale. The irony isn’t lost on the song’s theme of lamenting opportunities lost.
Listening to the album as a whole makes one wonder if the yearning and passion of earnest pop rock has become such a predictably pedestrian form that it will negate even its own immediate appeal. The question then changes from: “Is Your Vegas built to last or are they only for right now?” to “Is Your Vegas even for right now?”
Aaron Simms
http://www.yourvegasmusic.com/
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