But I digress - it is gross because it is the 144th review on the CD Odyssey. Get it - or did I totally gross you out with that joke?
As the crowd buzzes about how I shouldn't quit my day job, I'll settle in and review this album.
Disc 144 is...Tremolo
Artist: Blue RodeoYear of Release: 1997
What’s Up With The Cover?: I think it is a close up of a microphone. Maybe it has something to do with Tremolo, whatever that is. Anyway as album covers go - boring, but inoffensive.
How I Came To Know It: Blue Rodeo is a Sheila band - the first band she ever actively tried to get me into. It worked. "Tremolo" is just Sheila buying every Blue Rodeo CD - this one is from around the middle of their career, and would've come out the year we got married, thirteen years ago. Time flies.
How It Stacks Up: We have twelve Blue Rodeo albums now, which is all of them. This is not one of my favourites, although it is still good. I'll say 9th or 10th out of twelve.
Rating: 3 stars.
"Tremolo" came out in 1997, only the second album since their masterpiece, 1993's "Five Days In July", and still living in that mammoth album's shadow.
The record has its moments, but I didn't find any songs that had that wow factor. Part of the problem is my old saw - too long. The album has fourteen songs, already straining at the limits of reasonable. Add to that a number of tracks over five minutes, and two over six, and it is just a little too self-indulgent. The songs themselves are competent, and well played, but many of the long ones really could shave a minute off and be that much better.
The exception to this is "Frog's Lullaby", which comes in at a whopping 7:05. No amount of shaving minutes would make this song passable - it is annoying at any length. One of those Greg Keelor "I am so stoned!" moments that needed to be reeled in before it got started.
It is more than a little ironic that track eleven on "Tremolo" is called "Dragging On"; at this point there are still three more songs to go (including the aforementioned frog song). If they had cut the album off at "Dragging On", it would have a better overall flow, and the lesser tracks would have a better chance to establish themselves in the listener's ear.
On the positive side, Keelor does deliver a winner with "Disappear", which is a great song, and one of Sheila's favourites I am recently advised. I'm not sure what it is about - a failed relationship or a flawed, but successful one. I think it is maybe about Greg's kids getting older, but I don't have an emotional frame of reference to be sure. That's my best guess, anyway.
Jim Cuddy has two excellent tracks of his own, "Falling Down Blue" and "Fallen From Grace" (yes, Jim excels at various types of falling down on this album). Cuddy's voice is adept at capturing loss, while simultaneously providing an undercurrent that encourages you to keep holding on.
Holding on for Blue Rodeo is also worth your time. This album and the one that preceded it ("Nowhere To Here") are lesser efforts to my mind, but they are followed by a couple that really reinvigorated my interest in the band. While "Tremolo" is not my favourite, it keeps the pilot light on and let's face it - average Blue Rodeo is far better than any album by a lot of other Canadian bands with bigger record sales.
Are you listening, Nickelback? If you are - My voice must sound really weird to your talentless ears.
Best tracks: Falling Down Blue, Fallen From Grace, Disappear
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