When you see a band named after a Leonard Cohen song you can’t help but wonder whether this is going to be another attempt at creating introspective songs about lost loves and depressing lives. I’m afraid that with A Singer Must Die, you really don’t want to know. In fact you’re left hoping the band will take a cue from their name and take something positive out of this.

It’s been a long time since I’ve struggled to listen to an album all the way through, but this is torturously dull and soul destroying. After forcing my way through these ten songs I was left wanting to play David Gray’s last effort to hear something uplifting. The production is flat, the songs unadventurous and less said about the vocals the better. As these guys hail from France, the vocals are delivered with a vague French lilt that blunts the end of the words and further dulls them. I’d have preferred them to sing in French and annunciate the lyrics better and not sound like Jamie Olivier after 12 pints of cheap lager. I honestly can’t stress how dull this actually is, from the piano ballad of Chasing After Loss, which is below par Keane but with guitars, to the boringly predictable Inadequate, which you’d hear in pub backroom’s the country over.

There is nothing here that warrants a positive remark, this kind of AOR soft rock should be dead and buried somewhere in the Channel and never be allowed to surface again. Please, please, please STOP.
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Links
A Singer Must Die [myspace]