Well, this one wins packaging design of the week by a mile. The digipak comes complete with a pair of 3-D glasses – the sort with cardboard frames, and one red lens and one green lens. And yes, they work, making for cover art that leaps straight off the card. It’s pretty cool, in a novelty sort of a way.
It’s a pity, then, that there’s nothing remotely novel – or even three-dimensional – about the bland acoustic-led, folk-tinged US college country rock that the CD itself contains.
Try as they / he might to wring some emotion out of the sting-augmented ‘She Was Poor But She Was Honest’ and the slower, more stripped back ‘You Stole My Time’, ‘Now in 3D’ lacks real emotional depth, there’s nothing to really get stuck into or relate to.
Lyrically, ‘The Adverts’ may grapple with the grim, gritty realities of life, but musically, its light jazzy sound is just too jaunty and lightweight to carry any kind of gravitas. Even when the lyrical content is given to grouching about break-ups and other downers, Chris maintains a chirpy-sounding demeanour that’s actually quite irksome – in the same sort of way you could hear Marti Pellow grinning way regardless of the song’s subject matter. Endearing it isn’t, and in all, it makes for a rather frustrating listen.
|
Still like the cover though.
Spekki Chris Online
|
