Review of ShamRain - Goodbye To All That

Elevator music. No matter how hard I try, I can't stay focused on this album. And it's not me. Goodbye To All That is generic, uninspired, lifeless - and I don't mean to be harsh - completely vanilla music. You've heard it before but what you heard was done better. What's worse is that even among similar boring radio-friendly albums this has lots of competition.

The band is Finnish but the sound is distinctly 1990s British alternative rock. I hear lots of Radiohead and even a good bit of Oasis and The Manic Street Preachers. Shamrain doesn't do much to mess with the established Brit-rock formula but they pull it off well enough. The songs' structures are mostly traditional for pop-rock, the choruses can sometimes be slightly infectious and the melodies are frequently moody. On the third track, "Ghosts I See", some ethereal female vocals make an appearance, so there's one thing to set them apart, I guess. Still, if it weren't for the heavy melancholic tone that screams Scandinavia I would never guess that Shamrain weren't a third-tier ex-The Cure or Radiohead cover group from London.

So you get the picture now: extremely melancholic Brit-rock with a few female vocal flourishes. Interested? To continue, I should talk about the melancholy. Bands like Katatonia and The Gathering write melancholic rock songs that move me; their songs have a way of finding the worst in every situation I'm in. And I'm happy for the music-related bad moods because the experience is like a trip, so engaging that I feel as if I've been transported to another emotional world. As I'm writing this review, however, I'm hearing lots of emotion flying around me but I haven't boarded any of the flights. I'm into my fifth or so listen of the album and "Stars Will Fall", the sixth track, has just started and I can't bear it anymore so I've turned it off. This is the sort of forced, adolescent, overbearing melancholy that doesn't add to or even fit a song, but drags it down. In this case it's downright irritating.

Irritation is the only strong emotion I can attest to in an otherwise bland listening experience. Which is why Goodbye To All That doesn't even really function as background music though that's all it's probably good for. Not recommended.

Release Details

ShamRain

Goodbye To All That

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