If TORI SPARKS wore glasses she’d look like Anastasia. Having listened to ‘Rivers And Roads’ I now realise that this similarity is the single most interesting thing about TORI whose music fires out absolutely no sparks whatsoever despite the teasing promise of her name. Her second album starts favourably if unexceptionally with ‘Trouble’ a swinging bluesy number that seems to suit her attempts at a sultry voice. After that it’s pretty much downhill all the way.
TORI flexes her song-writing muscles with a number of different styles - blues, light rock, country - but she is only strong enough to blend them into a bland, predominantly acoustic fudge: sweet, sickly and very cloying. I think it’s called Adult Contemporary, a catch-all term that is more often a byword for stupendously dull. TORI’S voice – which reminds me fleetingly of Sharleen Spiteri - is powerful but is also a vacuum to passion, its dampening effect on the emotions aided and abetted by her often clumsy lyrics (sample: “Good men fight the tide/ But watch it boys / The ocean’s got you / Right between the eyes” from ‘Red Letter Day’) and an over-ambitious musical template that stretches far beyond the scope of her moderate talent.
|
Despite trying out a number of genres her propensity to arrange everything in a lumbering mid-tempo mire soon becomes an irritant and reaches its unintentionally ironic low-point on ‘Driving Alone’ where the opening line of “Driving above ninety, away from your direction” is set to the equivalent pace of a three point turn in a cul-de-sac. CPR is briefly attempted on ‘Otherwise’ but by the close of the burdensome trudge that is ‘Remembering You’ any further attempts at resuscitation would be beyond even the most evangelical of miracle workers.
I’ve nothing against slowing things down and in the right hands – Richard Hawley, Kurt Wagner, Bonnie Raitt – it’s a joy to hear but with TORI it’s like being forced to listen to the looped end credit theme of some horribly sentimental family-oriented Disney film.
|
