secondhand serenade

'Hear Me Now'

Year:                   2010

Label:                  Liberator

Track Listing:     1. Distance

2. Something More

3. Stay Away

4. You And I

5. Is There Anybody Out There

6. Reach For The Sky

7. Only Hope

8. So Long

9. World Turns

10. Nightmare

11. Hear Me Now

Dave’s 'Hear Me Now' - Secondhand Serenade Review:

It seems every where you turn these days that there is yet another emo/alternative band sprouting up getting ready to knock bands like Fall Out Boy off their perch, well I hate to be the one that says it but it isn’t going to be Secondhand Serenade that does just that. With the release of ‘Hear Me Now’ this is their fourth album yet still they come across as quite ordinary… there are glimmers of hope in their music but the ‘good’ never gets excellent.

It’s a shame because you would be horribly wrong if you called a track like ‘Distance’ a bad track, and this is even a band that can pull off a slow ballad like ‘Something More’ without making you want to slit your wrists, but they produce too many ordinary tracks like ‘Stay Away’ and ‘You And I’… these are middle-of-the-road tracks that neither disappoint or excite.

‘Is There Anybody Out There’, ‘Reach For The Sky’ and ‘Only Hope’ are performed with feeling while ‘World Turns’ has lyrics like poetry but there just isn’t that ‘thing’ there that makes you wanna say ‘WOW, what a great band’. The highlight of this album however is clearly ‘Hear Me Now’ which is made even better by some female vocals provided by Juliet Simms.

RATING:- *** (out of 5)

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