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Self-Titled
Crap. Well, they got me. I got cut down by that damn seductively, smooth edge of Susan Hyatts sweet vocals and catchy melodies. Seeing that their major selling point was we sound like Garbage meets Blondie I went into this review preparing myself for the worst. Maybe thats why I had a hard time disliking it; my expectations were already extremely low. I was not prepared for this huge, escalating banshee voice filling in the music with originally catchy choruses. She seems to have this gift of captivating an audience, and thats only going off this CD right now. The comparison works in a better way than I expected: she has a Shirley Manson-esque voice, but sings in a great Deborah Harry-esque range and style. Unfortunately that seems to be where my high praise ends. Some tracks, like In My System specifically, have pretty innovative and interesting music lines, and the guitar really stands out; but in a lot of cases the music is a bit more geared to the territories of dramatic cheese-synth-pop. Not all the tracks fall into this area, but the ones that do have a bit too much of a Garbage meets Batman Forever type of feel. There are dark synth hummings and waverings spread overtop that would have landed most of these tracks beautifully on the Crow 2 soundtrackwhich is definitely not a bad thing for a lot of people. Geoff Tyson noticeably has spent a lot of time composing the majority of these tracks and leaves them as seamless and pretty organic. Together, the two of them have created this great Shirley Bassey/James Bond theme theatrical pop album. In all honesty I will probably go see them when they come through town; I would love to see the energy they throw into a show. This nicely made-up and perfected plastic pop has a good attitude, which will probably get them thrown onto a big label soon.
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