Album Reviews |

Bo Bruce

Before I Sleep 5 ( 2012 )
Landslide / Save Me / Alive / Speed the Fire / Telescope / Ghost Town / On the Wire / Holding the Light / Lightkeeper / The Fall / The Hands I Hold / Echoes / Golden / How We're Made

She appeared on the first season of the UK version of 'The Voice' and didn't win. The winner has released an album that didn't chart and a single that didn't chart - said person was in the Tom Jones team. Bo was mentored by Danny from The Script, and has enjoyed a UK top ten album for her efforts. Such facts should be a warning to all current and future people going on 'The Voice', you really don't want to choose 'Team Tom' - he's the only one there after all that can't either write songs, arrange songs, produce songs - or do much useful at all bar shouting his way through old material. Still, back to Bo Bruce. If the very first vocal on your very first album is autotuned, i'm turning off you immediately, and sadly, such is the case for Bo Bruce. Well, perhaps that came out the wrong way, after enjoying a top ten album, she wouldn't give a toss what a tuppence and a shilling reviewer like me would say, but i'm going to go ahead and say it anyway, because that's rather the point of me doing all these things, I won't just write about the good things in life. What you dislike, becomes to define you, more that what you do like.

I've scanned the writing credits for this album, always a telling sign. There is strange array of co-writers and producers and only one song written by her alone, 'Holding The Light', so lets focus on that. Oh, bollocks, somebody has decided to 'produce' it, lending her voice that wonderful invention 'auto-tune' and deciding a passionate acoustic ballad needed drum beats to liven it up - what, if The Beatles presented said idiot 'Something' by George Harrison, would he put dance beats underneath that as well? Weird comparison I know, but relevant. Making things sound 'modern' or 'contemporary' is entirely not what producers, managers and engineers should be doing, they should be focusing on making things new and unique and different - especially with someone like Bo Bruce, who currently lacks a public identity.

'The Fall' has been scheduled for single release, the previous single failing to get playlisted anywhere - props to her management team on the fact they have managed to present her as an album act and get the album to actually sell, yet selling the odd single as well would surely be desireable? 'The Fall'? She's from Wiltshire, so not quite convinced by her vocal that's seemingly trying to sound Irish? 'The Fall', absolutely nothing happens, although towards the end she pleads 'you want me, you want me' - which is faintly stirring. Ultimately, the entire album is an utter waste of space and represents everything wrong with music in this decade, for god sake, let the artists be themselves, don't drown them in a dozen songwriters and producers and water them down so much. That way, absolutely everything ends up sounding exactly the same as absolutely everything else.

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