Adrian's Album Reviews

Orson



Bright Idea 4 ( 2006 )
Bright Idea / No Tomorrow / Happiness / Already Over / Downtown / Tryin To Help / So Ahead Of Me / Last Night / Look Around / Save The World / Okay Song

Mork calling Orson. Come in Orson. Ok, cheap shot. Interesting verses, appallingly clod-hopping choruses? Well, yes. They build up and build to a chorus that makes you want to vomit. They do this in every single song. The lyrics through the verses aren't all that and a bag of sugar either, so where does that leave us? Well, if each and every song were half as long, we'd be doing well. We'd have a good album. Not that any song has any length about it anyway, all three/four minutes, but it's too many minutes and seconds for this listener and these songs. Did I say the singer wears a hat? That's his image, for what it's worth. Let's take, oooh, 'Tryin To Help'. Funky, pretty groovy. The singer shouts 'hey' and you wish he wouldn't. The riff is pretty cool. Interesting and decent song until 'ONLY TRYING TO HELP!!!!!!!' comes across rather desperately. We're still waiting for the chorus proper, bopping our heads not too put off by the only trying to help section. We are? Yes, please indulge me. What happens? Well, the 'ONLY TRYING TO HELP!!!!' bit comes in again, of course. Shouted again and repeated and repeated until I want to throw a brick at the stereo. Cliched middle-eight. You've seen this movie before? Bully for you. These are lyrics about nothing. The 'twiddly' pop guitar solo hardly helps as two minutes of 'Only tryin to help', god help us, pass by. Orson remind me of New Radicals, not a band to be reminded of, really. 'No Tomorrow' and 'Bright Idea' that kick off the album are both pleasant dinner party listening. I brought along George W Bush to my dinner party. He likes Orson, probably.

The first half of the album is the better half. Pop choruses that you can stomach enough for Orson to last their fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes later, you don't want to listen to their polite thirty-something brand of rock music ever again, though. It's like listening to Mick Hucknall make rock music, or something. The piano ballad on side two, 'Look Around', promises to be much needed variety, yet becomes sickeningly self-obsessed and much like music for a scene in a movie where a couple fall in love. It's far too bland to be anything other than a slightly dodgy shade of wallpaper you helped buy to decorate the flat of your mother in law. If you want a decent enough album of mediocre plod-rock, you can invest your money in Orson, safe enough in the knowledge that, a couple of songs apart if I'm being generous, that's exactly what they'll give you. There's nothing here though, pardon the pun, to hang your hat on, really.

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