A new year; fresh music, new sounds and revolution. That's what we're all looking forward to, right? That's what we look forward to every year when the labels unleash their brand new talent to blow away the January blues. Well, if excitement is your thing, move along; there's nothing to see here.
Garrison Starr hails from Nashville, and image-wise looks like a bit of a ball-buster. You're expecting something a bit meaty, bitter and aggressive – something to really put the men in their place. Yet there is not a husky voice to be found on her album 'The Girl That Killed September' (a title that also hints towards something darker than it turns out to be).
There seems to be an annoying tendency in popular music just to offer people more of the same, and they seem to lap it up. Here we have another woman with a pretty voice, singing bland tales of broken hearts and bitterness without any semblance of emotion. It's as if having instruments on there at all somehow validates it as artistic, but the reality is that this is as predictable as anything Sheryl Crow has ever released... but at least she kind of did it first.
“40 Days” is an incredibly dull song. A mid tempo number with a Joan Osbourne-lite chorus of “Forty daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaays/Forty niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiights alone/I'm ready now to let it go.” I've felt more emotional having received a paper-cut.
“You pray for conversion/But you don't know what for/It's a tug of war,” is just a sample of the trite lyrical content of 'Unchangeable,' which is about a man with an unchangeable heart. Can you relate to it? Not at all – there is no depth to the songs that could even remotely strike a chord? It's so generic in it's attempts to appeal to everyone, that it will no doubt connect with no-one.
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I challenge anyone to sit through the entirety of this album and not feel slightly greyer as a result. If the up-beat numbers are dull, the ballads are very much in the process of decay. It's hard to imagine anyone feeling anything other than lethargic having heard particular lowlight “Little Lonely Girl.” The timid, sweet, broken voice does nothing to move you, and this song, like the rest, never emerge from being background music (in a place you probably don't want to be).
It's another album with a supposed talent and a bunch of session musicians. It's a competent voice, but there is nothing to it, and that is exactly how albums like this need to be judged. Had there been something different or unique about it musically, then there would be more to talk about than perhaps the vocal performance. But every song is a watered down folk rock standard that leaves you craving for a Joni Mitchell song just to cleanse you. One song ends, another one starts... but nothing happens. As an album it's not so much an emotional journey, as a very long wait.
As long as there are programmes like Sex and the City and Ugly Betty out there, there will no doubt be a demand for acts like Garrison Starr. But for the rest of us, shall we concentrate on something a bit more important?
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