The good thing about his solo offering is that he does a valiant job in trying to do it, penning almost every track on the record and promoting the notion that some Idols are actually musicians, too. We knew this way back when Guy Sebastian won the first series, but when his hurriedly assembled album was rushed into stores two weeks after the season finished, there wasn’t much hope. So, points to Carr for digging in his heels and demanding that some original, non studio-balladry-hack music made it onto this CD. Carr has the kind of rockabilly, ‘I eat cigarettes for breakfast and booze for lunch’ mentality that turns pretty much all of his songs into up-tempo, swaggering hits, which is not necessarily a bad thing. However, the honesty and rawness of his street performance, ‘square peg’ aesthetic is nicely sheared and polished into a major label round hole, and that’s when things go a little pear shaped.
Current single, ‘Feels Like Whoa’, feels like a Matchbox 20 rip off, right down to the “Whoa” chorus, while the funky, ‘Stay Awake’, succeeds on the fact that it seemingly borrows the verse, chorus and melody from Gavin DeGraw’s, ‘I Don’t Want To Be’. Considering Carr’s ample talent for song writing, this seems a bit weak.
Of course, every Idol graduate is overseen by a crack team of marketing professionals, who make sure that there really is ‘something for everybody’ on every debut release; thus we are subjected to Carr as an acoustic, Jack Johnson hero on ‘Hurricanes’ and The Fray on ‘Light Years’. The fact is that Carr knows his strengths and plays to them well, but he’s boxed in by policy and what seems to be a never-ending cavalcade of extra session players, so that his original conception is marred by the gloss he so desperately tried to avoid in the first place. That said, he’s still my favourite and these songs are infinitely more fun than listening to Young Divas. Release date: 21 March 2009 (Sony)
Copyright : MTV Australia
