Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Sorry, but...


...I just downloaded Josh Groban's new single - the first new track from him in years - and I think it will end up "hidden away" and forgotten in my music folder.

It's a strange feeling for me to review this because I jumped off the Groban train a while back, and had I still been on it I'd have been over the moon and through the roof at the mere thought of a new (finally!) song. For once I'm able to see it all from the outside, which can be a good thing and a bad thing.

Good because I know my fangirl approach isn't clouding my judgment, bad because a lot of people will probably not like the following.

I did know that Josh proclaimed that he'd never been more proud of any of his albums than the upcoming "Illuminations" (due out in November), that it is supposedly a more toned down album, not overproduced and glossy, but with a more intimate setting. From the single "Hidden away", however, none of that is evident.

More than anything it comes across as a confusing few minutes of musical chaos. It starts promising, with just piano and vocals, but then builds up with an orchestral arrangement that by now must be his trademark, although in this song it sounds more cheesy and misplaced. The effects and instrumental layers pile up gradually (I swear I heard a banjo paired with the orchestra at the end) and as a result it becomes perhaps Groban's most evident musical identity crisis yet.

Which also has a lot to do with the vocals, that are based on his semi-classical-musical-theatre voice, but this time it sounds like he's really trying to sound like a singer-songwriter with no operatic style - like he's grown tired of his voice and wants to have a new one. To my ears it just sounds desperate, as if he's denying his god-given gift (which he at least initially had) to fit into a more conventional singer songwriter box. Nowhere is it more evident that in his little "yooohooo"s at the end in a not particularly strong falsetto. It makes you want to ask "who are you really?"

Knowing his background - he has actually worked with several vocal coaches and is said to have had a repertoire of several arias already in his teens - it makes you wonder what National Opera would have hired him today had it not been for his other career choice. If he'd suddenly appear in Cosi fan tutte I'd hop back on the Groban train any minute.

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