Apparently, HEY! NEGRITA are born out of drug addiction and tragedy, the sound of a man having faced his demons, come out fighting and set his innermost feelings to music. Unfortunately, the mental anguish seems to have taken all the fight and what we’re left with is a decidedly middle of the road bit of Grammy-potential soul-searching.
Having left London for the States armed with records from likes of the Stones and the Animals and come back with stuff from the Allman Brothers and the Band, main man Felix Bechtolsheimer has made an album of syrupy ballads of lost love and troubled times. It’s not that it’s particularly bad, just inoffensive to the extreme – you might tapa stout-fuelled foot along and think it was alright-ish if they were playing in a plastic Irish pub but apart from that there’s not much to be said.
Lines like “I can see the ocean in your eyes”, “This old pack of smokes is all I’m set to lose” add nothing to a safe mix of Aaron Spelling TV show ballads and toe tappers with bits of the Waterboys, Tom Petty and a very watered down Pogues, making for a rather forgettable album.
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If you still mourn the passing of the Travelling Wilburys, if looking out wistfully across windswept beaches listening to Tom Petty ballads and falling back into a chair, eyes closed with a pained, resigned look on your face to the sounds of John Cougar Mellencamp is your thing then this is for you. I, as yet, am still clinging to the fact that I’m not middle aged or American enough for this and will be giving Hey Negrita a miss until I am.
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