Fivespeed - Morning Over Midnight

What is this, follow the leader? Fivespeed’s CD Morning over Midnight sounds like any other kind of commercial-friendly hard rock. We’re talking about simple and repeatable chords, a generic and throaty “singing,” and redundant songs. There’s so little originality on the album that it might as well be elevator music. (Even that’s too lenient - Ensure that nobody ever rides the elevator, and just in case, mute the CD.) It’s not that Morning over Midnight is terrible, it’s more that there’s nothing to it. Suffice to say that any album in this genre that is published by a major label like Virgin is going to have at least the same technical chops and acoustic sound, so why this one? The repetition of a lyric in progressively louder increments is not impressive in of itself, nor is the ability to produce sound from an instrument. This is singing and playing taken to the least extreme possible (to still be hard rock), and the effect is unsurprisingly underwhelming. There are a few exceptions, like “Misery Loves Company” and “Blame it on You” (surprising because they don’t suck), but if you throw enough darts at a wall, some of them will stick. Then again, it could just be that when Fivespeed scales back their aggression (for which their style doesn’t really fit), their playing seems more resonant in the face of all the other yelling. “Wait Forever” mentions that they have “yet to find the low, yet to find the low, yet to find the low, yet to find the low,” but then again, they’ve also failed to find any high. [www.fivespeedmusic.com]