release date: Aug. 22, 2005
format: cd (EMI 3380622)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,38]
producer: Bryce Goggin & Grand Avenue
label: EMI - nationality: Denmark
Track highlights: 1. "On Your Side" (4 / 5) - 2. "Playground" - 3. "The City's on Fire" - 5. "Beautiful Mistake" - 6. "After the Rain" - 10. "She" [non-album version]
2nd studio album by Grand Avenue released two years after the debut is the highly anticipated follow-up to a fine debut. The style is basically the same, although, the sound has become more sophisticated, multi-layered, but still founded on guitars and Rasmus Walter's characteristic and fine vocal. The album is produced by Bryce Googin who has previously worked with The Lemonheads, Apples in Stereo, Madder Rose, and Joan as a Police Woman (aka Joan Wasser). Wasser plays viola and has arranged the strings for the album, and Fred Kevorkian, who has worked with major artists such as Sonic Youth, Lloyd Cole, Cassandra Wilson, etc., has mastered the album. So, things are pretty much laid out for an expected international album release that wouldn't go unnoticed. And She does start off on the highest level - again, much like on the debut with promises of greatness, but it also drops too soon in quality. It never becomes poor or mediocre, but occasionally it does link a bit too much to the sound of Coldplay, R.E.M. and U2 instead of presenting an original sound.
She is not really what critics and album buyers had hoped for, I believe. The band, and perhaps especially, lead vocalist Rasmus Walter undoubtedly has potential, but the songs are not quite there. Grand Avenue puts itself somewhere in between pop / rock, soft rock of British origin and American soft rock built on a blues rock tradition - and mostly just performs better when they seem most inspired by the American touch, which has strangely, but unfortunately, been subdued on this particular album with an American producer. The cover art is credited Rasmus Walter's twin-brother Anders, who also directed music videos for the band.
Grand Avenue is still a promising act that would do better if they didn't try so hard to make R.E.M.- or U2-music. She is an album with international sound but at the same time also presents an uneven collection of songs with a little too much fill.
[ Gaffa.dk 3 / 6 stars ]
