Sacred Heart's
"Shake" is supposed to be a pretty great album. And I use the word "supposed" and "to be" following that up. It's an 80s tribute type cd, not in the sense of actually copying other artist's music, but rather attempting to recreate the sound.
Yet, unlike other bands that blend these elements sensibly and with a certain amount of class and style,
Sacred Heart seems rather bland and unexciting. Kind of like the red headed step child, there's a good amount of temper and fire here, but it is wasted because the overall vibe is
"meh", second class, and
"who cares?". Even the album cover is cheesy with the title in Las Vegas style blinky neon lights.
No matter how many exclamation marks the press use to punctuate the over excited press information, it just goes flat. Take the title track for example -
"Shake". It's slow, redundant, and utterly mundane. The thick musical backing intends on leaving a modern-ish flare but only succeeds in bringing the disc down into muddy, cumbersome waters. Where there should be light and energy to set the listener aflame, it just sits in the murk like yesterday's lunch left out in the sun to wither, mold and become refuse.
This is all very troubling because the first effort was less modern, more 80s posing and alot more fun.
"Shake" can't decide whether it wants to go for excess or brooding rock and ends up failing at both sides of the coin. They don't wish to be pigeonholed and thus decline any kind of subgenre and just leave it at "rock" and with the schizophrenic jump of music "rock" sounds on the album, that is for the best.
"Afraid" has moments that sound nice and slick but ultimately just comes across as another me-too song.
"Lift You Up" does the opposite, plodding around in flat vocals and boring guitar noodling. The chorus fizzling out is just the final death toll.
"1000 Years" could have been a
Dokken B-side, but was shelved for a reason. It just doesn't possess anything to bring you back and tempt you to press "play" ever again. It's not that the album is bad per se, it's just utterly average. Paul Stead's vocals are serviceable and the musicians backing him up seem to be going through the motions as well.
Oh it's all just so run-of-the-mill, been there - done that - boring.
"Shake" isn't likely to attract new consumers or even satisfy the established ones. Here's hoping that a third effort, if cooked up, manages to bring them back to the older sound and they get this flirtation with modern stylings 'shaken' and purified from their system. Other bands can dance this line, but
Sacred Heart has only proven that they cannot, making
"Shake" a disappointing album indeed.
Written by
Alanna Tuesday, October 23, 2007
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