The Alarm – Change CD
On Change, The Alarm go U2 again and more than ever it seems. It even goes as far as Mike Peters, the band's singer, doing a Bono impression on some of the songs (especially on the song Where A Town Once Stood this is very clear) which, if you're not overly familiar with either band, could be easily mistaken for the other of those two singers. But that aside, does this full U2 direction do the band any favours?
Well, in general, it's mainly a really inconsistent record. There's some songs i'd skip next time listening without a second thought and there's also some really solid tracks on here. Especially the first half of the album has some strong songs, Sold Me Down The River and Love Don't Come Easy especially come to mind when saying this.
But we can't go with highlighting the good parts if we don't show some contrast and so we end up at the tracks Rivers To Cross and A New South Wales, the last two songs on the album. These two are melodramatic and try to put some variety in the sound of the album. This can be seen as a plus and i give them credit for trying surely, because a lot of the album has a same-ish sound formula at times. But these two tracks just don't really work and especially A New South Wales is overly dramatic and with that i mean the annoying side of that.
All in all, a bit of a step down by this band compared to Eye Of The Hurricane, but in general it still has more to offer than earlier efforts Strength and Declaration do.
Update: 2 months after original rating and some heavy listening while at the record store later, i decided to update my rating for this album. It's now my favourite by the band and i even bought a copy of the album myself now. It's nothing revolutionary still, that's not something this band does it seems, it's just consistent decent fun. Honestly a nice album to listen to while painting a wall of your room and feeling anxious about messing up too!
Label: I.R.S. Records – CDP 24 1029 2
Country: Europe
Media Condition: Near Mint (NM or M-)
Sleeve Condition: Near Mint (NM or M-)