I must admit that I find bands who deliver patronising missives -e.g. beginning simple explanations with phrases like “Look, it’s simple” and ending them with “So do your part” - on why they don’t need the music industry and why they opt to remain determinedly independent all rather tedious. Methinks they doth protest too much sometimes.
I won’t bore you with the details of the whys and wherefores but California’s THE RED has decided to make their album ‘Burn’ available for free, asking only that if you like the album you burn (geddit?) three copies onto CD and pass it onto your friends and then ask them to do likewise until exactly 428 days later you receive a copy of it again from your 4th best friend in Weybridge (who rates you higher on the friendship ladder than you do him/her). No advice is given as to what to do with the album if a) you don’t like it or b) if you do not possess CD burning capabilities or indeed c) if you have less than three friends, although the band inadvertently confesses that the album “works really well with fire”.
‘Burn’ is not a bad album - certainly not a viable alternative fuel to logs or coal - but it does leave the impression of being front man Marco Aiello’s solo acoustic release with knobs on rather than a true band effort. On paper THE RED is a three-piece with Steve Striegel and Tony Nollay supporting Aiello’s ego on drums and bass respectively. The music is decidedly light-rock and very American: lots of wrought emotion in the vocals (imagine a WASPish Enrique Iglesias) that taken across the entire album become slightly wearisome and one-dimensional. THE RED also sounds like the kind of “indie” band American middle-class white college girls will go crazy for, believing Aiello’s lyrical preoccupations with love and the fairer sex (the near-permanent topic of ‘Burn’) an indication of his sensitivity as a male. Expect to hear them soon on Dawson’s Creek or whatever the latest navel-gazing show about well-off self-centred beautiful people in permanent sunshine and large tastefully furnished rooms happens to be this week.
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There are moments of pleasure to be derived from ‘Burn’. The trio of tracks running back to back, ‘Take It Off’ (nice humming harmonies), ‘I Will’ (builds well) and, especially ‘Run’ (interestingly the only band composition), is the pick of the bunch. The instrumental ‘Dreaming’ also provides welcome respite from Aiello’s mannered singing. And give him his due he does have a nice touch on the old acoustic and an ear for a tune but there is something lacking in ‘Burn’ that I can’t quite put my finger on. Perhaps it’s that lack of band presence or the nagging feeling of artificiality in Aiello’s delivery; maybe it’s too American for my tastes, too bland and thin sounding in too many places or perhaps I just don’t get it.
However, if my three best friends are reading this….
www.thered.com
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