Lola Ray - Liars

Many recall a time back in the 80’s, and again to a lesser extent in the mid-90’s, where the music had become so bland and uninspired that something had to change. The last few years’ popular music trends support a renewed testament to a critical need for fresh inspiration and unfortunately for Lola Ray, Liars fully supports that charge. There aren’t enough similes in the English language to describe the vanilla, one-dimensional arrangements that make up the band’s sophomore effort. And with that said, perhaps a more appropriate name for Lola Ray’s sophomore release would be Epitaph, because they are going to have a really hard time trying to come back from this. The album starts off with some promise. "Officer & A Gentleman" is fairly catchy, though probably not appealing enough to “catch on”. Immediately thereafter, the music disintegrates into a monotonous and way-too-inspired-by-recent-middle-of-the-road indie genre tunes to tolerate for too long, with lyrics that often reach the annoying and insipid (the songs “We’re Not Having Any Fun” and “I Will Make You Mine” immediately come to mind). When compared with its predecessor, one wonders how the members of this band thought that it was okay to issue this album with any degree of professional integrity. Not that Lola Ray’s first album, I Don’t Know You, fueled by the crunchy “Automatic Girl” was the stellar million-selling “new sound” that so many freshmen stumble upon and then try to spend the rest of their careers trying to duplicate. But it was at least inspired and showed promise. What a huge disappointment to read on this band’s website the references to all of the time they had on the road to compare and combine their musical influences: Motown, The Beach Boys, The Jam and The Cure among them, and really mold their sound. Because if this is the result, they must have had a serious exhaust leak filling the back of their tour van (the band did include a note referring to unrealized focus and isolation during the recording of this album in the intro to their bio…which also may have had an impact). Bottom line? If you have never heard of this band but caught enough on some airwave or web page somewhere to pique your interest, invest your time and your money on their first release. It will give you a much better idea of the potential that Lola Ray possesses. Perhaps that boost in sales will even encourage the group to return to the studio and not be so inclined to be lured by the external “distractions” that so often accompany rock ‘n’ roll success and send them into ruin…to rediscover the punch of their first album and possibly give them a future in the music industry –-or at the very least--keep them signed. Any other money spent would be a waste. [www.lolaray.com]