Gavin Makes His Big Pop Move3 Out Of 5 Stars
After the top ten success of "Sweeter," touring with Train and Maroon 5, you could hardly blame Gavin DeGraw for wanting his albums to achieve that headliner level of success on his own. "Make a Move" is just that kind of album, tasting of the generic pop Maroon 5 turns out on a regular basis, but minus the charisma of an Adam Levine, and pumped up production-wise until it falls victim to the loudness wars. Even with a decent stereo system, "Best I Ever Had" splats its way through its over-compression. If that's not enough, the songs here are all co-helmed by hired guns like Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic, which robs the songs of personality but makes them sound exquisitely tailored for pop radio, like the way "Heartbreak" so effortlessly clones Maroon 5.
That's a darn shame, as the best moments of "Sweeter" and earlier albums showed a promising keyboardist writing and performing some nicely personal work and showing some semblance of personality, ala Five For Fighting's John Ondrasik. As over-done as "Best I Ever Had" is, it's still a darn fine poptune. Same for the mellower "Everything Will Change," co-written with Boys Like Girls' Martin Johnson (who made their pop move on their last album, "Crazy World"), but it still feels like the most personal song on "Make a Move." In total, there aren't any real bad songs here, only indistinguishable ones. That isn't always a hindrance, so if the album wasn't so darn over-produced, I might have bumped it to a fourth star. Between the over-cooked sound and what sounds like a general removal of Gavin's personality, "Make a Move" comes off as generic. He's done better.
1 comment:
I just love Gavin DeGraw's newest album, "Make A Move". It has a variety of songs and sounds. I really like the blues sound of "Every Little Bit" and I just realized that Billy Norris does have a guitar solo on the album.
I just don't understand why it is not getting played on the radio.
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