"I can't wait until you let me down," Matthew Scannell sings over store-bought modern rock. "When You Cry" stands in for "Everything You Want" and introduces the album's catch phrase psychotherapy. Now, Vertical has returned with Go, an album that proves the band's lack of ideas wasn't a fluke, and reaffirms their status as third-tier imitators. In 1999, Vertical Horizon didn't have much with which to follow its breakthrough single, "Everything You Want." And yet the song's percolating groove provided enough sustenance for listeners led astray by Secret Samadhi, Live's pompous follow-up to Throwing Copper. Goofy nu-metallers may make music for chest-bumping in the arenas, but these guys are stuck writing soundtracks for Pottery Barn. In the beige world of hot adult contemporary, interchangeable white guys rock test-marketed riffs under a relatively distinguishable frontman's greeting-card haiku. While the metal guys' latent high-school anger and crushed-velvet posturing is pretty hard to take, at least they get to turn up the amps and kick out the jock jams. As vapid as nu-metal became once the pump backed up and started spewing its smelly backwash onto the stages of Ozfest, the fresh-scent hallways of what the industry calls "hot AC" might be just as empty.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |