To go where?
Okay... I found this album while searching for Celtic rock music for a friend, and I must admit that it attracted my curiosity, given the fact that in spite of the impressive introductions on the group's main page, the one and only review it has got so far is negative to the extreme and without any explanations. I must also admit that I usually write about the music I find interesting and which I hope other people might also like to discover; I have infinite respect for everyone's creative endeavours and their (our) agony of artistic expression, so when I don't like something, I just don't write anything. And I have to confess that this time, I find myself in a difficult position.
Well, first of all this is more complicated than the (legitimate) gut reaction of "I like it" or "I hate it", which in some cases may be reversed by one or more repeat listens of an album. To my ears at least, this album is NOT unlistenable by any means, and this impression remains after having listened to it twice from beginning to end (that is, I deliberately listened for a second time, in order to confirm my first impression). It seems there was quite some work invested in it; the melodies are nothing groundbreaking but mostly all right, the voice not too bad either, the lyrics OK in most of the songs (there is MUCH worse than that, both in the music industry and the independent scene). According to their CVs, these people are music professionals, their group has been around for ten years and they have experience in live concerts. They seem to believe in what they are doing or at least, are making sincere efforts to prove it. So why am I left with this nagging impression that there is something crucial missing here?
Si l'amour etait de ce monde is an album of unfulfilled promises. A work that has the allure of something all-important and finally turns out to be, well, nothing more than "not bad". Everything is more or less "correctly" put together, but without that special "something" that will draw the attention and keep it focused - it is cerebral in its organisation but without much depth, and almost without heart. It is an album that manages to make a "cliche" of its own style, eliminating whatever virtues it might possess. The melodies are pleasant for the most part but sound too familiar and nearly identical to each other, the arrangements and vocal choruses were intended to create an ambience but end up being too predictable; after the music has stopped playing, nothing remains, not even a small spontaneous urge to go back and listen again - it's all gone and forgotten. Another very significant flaw is, I think, the way the voice has been treated - I don't know what kind of effects were used, but in many of the songs they seem to drown the voice and make it sound weak and forced in the higher notes (except if it sounds like that on its own, which I don't want to believe since the singer is a singing teacher herself), taking away much of the needed emotional tension and variability.
In all, what appears to be regretfully absent from this album is the mix of genuine dynamism, sensitivity and passion that should characterise this specific genre of music. This kind of music is identified by its ability to conjure up powerful images and provoke sweeping emotions. If any such feeling happened to be present in the creation of this work, it just didn't come through.
This is in no way meant to be a negative or discouraging review - please take these comments as a listener's personal and hopefully constructive opinion. The potential is definitely there, but unexploited; I keep having an uncomfortable feeling that this work doesn't use your own possibilities to advantage or do justice to your musical knowledge and ambitions. And that's a pity.
NOTE: This album has been withdrawn from Jamendo (which also seems to have, conventiently, taken my original review with it) as well as from Creative Commons. It was subsequently replaced with a couple of collections featuring "stubs" from the initial songs, serving (according to the authors' own statement) as promotional demos. In October 2010, following complaints about repeated violations of Jamendo's policy, Madfeet and their albums were permanently banned from the site. More about this band can be found on their official homepage.
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