11 tracks · 55 min
Germany's Reamonn has an ironic ability to create gold albums full of songs that you feel you'll rack your brains trying to remember the minute they've stopped playing. This 11-track debut is a large-scale affair: big on crashing, AOR-friendly guitars, even bigger in its remarkably ineffectual earnestness. Hopping from one dentist-chair rock ballad to another, the album consistently collapses on its own weight of leaden choruses and heavy emotions. Songs like "If I Go" or "Josephine" try as hard as they might to keep things acoustically simple, but both soon conjure images of a pop star holding his headphones, shutting his eyes, and crooning as sincerely as he can into an overhead microphone. Irish bred frontman Reamonn Garvey also keeps things lyrically simple with English-sung tales of love gone awry yet with about as much lasting insight as a fortune cookie (in the "Swim" Sting-athon, Garvey sings as if he's exposing a Great Truth: "So you go against what everybody feels, but feelings burn"). However, the album's sole shining moment -- the popular "Supergirl" -- at least uses subtle, gentle Italian guitar trills and a touching Peter Murphy impersonation to hint at potentially mu…
