DAVE BLAIR is a New York City based singer guitarist, and this CD was self released and recorded completely in Dave’s own studio.
There are seven tracks on the CD which would all fall into the rock and roots rock genre. There is a mix of styles throughout the CD, with Latin and pop influences, as well as rock-blues. This is the type of niggling CD, as when it’s good, it can be very good, but there are a few tracks that are heavily let down by repetitive lyrics which sound stilted on occasion.
The opening track is one of those. Entitled ‘How I Feel For You’, it comes across as a standard American rock/pop guitar song, and whilst the instrumentation is fine, and there are some great backing vocals, the lyrics tend to pull this down: -
“How I feel for you, Really feel for you, Feel for you, How I feel for you.” Ad infinitum.
‘Jaded’, which follows is another rock song with a mix of acoustic and electric guitars, a choppy chorus of “Oh I feel naked, so frustrated, I’m so jaded.” Whilst there is an excellent guitar solo, the chorus does lack the dynamic punch that I was hoping for.
Track three, ‘Sun And The Rain’ is altogether much better, an anthemic rock track which builds and is a good love song, here the lyrics take on a different life: “Sometimes she’s a sunny day, and her light shines right on me/ And sometimes she’s a winter’s stone, and I feel like I’m going to freeze.”
‘Biker Bar Brawl’ (what an excellent title) is a great instrumental track with a heavy blues based guitar riff, and is two and three quarter minutes of listening pleasure.
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‘What Would Ya Do’ is another good track with a slightly Latin edge to it and is melodic guitar rock, the lyrics just about avoid being mawkish: “What would ya do if I told you I love you? What would ya do if I told you I care?/ Why can’t you say that you love me too? When I look in your eyes I know that it’s true.”
‘Happy’ is an altogether faster harder rock song, and although I can’t make head nor tail of the lyrics, it stood out as one of the better tracks on the album. Finally, ‘747’, is another instrumental, this time with a funky 1970’s vibe, which I thought was a nice way to close the album and let it go out on a high.
Overall, I liked this more than disliked it but I'm not sure that's enough. My gut feeling is that if Dave stuck to his harder edged material and dropped the sentimentality then he would find a niche which suits him and win a lot more fans over in the process.
Check out Dave Blair at CD Baby
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