Hedley - Storms

Let's be completely honest from the beginning this album doesn't come close to being as good as their last album. The lack of seriously catchy uptempo pop rock numbers and the overwrought delivery of much of this material takes too much personality away from the band. The album overall is a little stiff and whiny specifically in the wanna be emotional delivery by Jaccob. It doesn't come off as honest emotion it sounds manufactured to pretend to be mature and grown up and greatly affected by their experiences overseas.

The album opens with torch song number one "One Life" not terrible but not worth listening to again either. The albums first single "Invincible" follows along a very similar path again passable but I'm not a huge fan of it either. The second torch song "Heaven's Gonna Wait" and I'm getting pretty bored at this point realizing that this album is a dud and I'm not going to get much of anything that was great about The Show Must Go. Well they finally write a pop tune that doesn't suck the joy and life out of listening to music. At this point I'd just like to hear something fluffy and uptempo and finally I'm rewarded a little for all the crap I've waded through. "Young" has some life and personality but even though its the best song on the album at this point its not enough and I'm still not happy with this album.

The song "Beautiful" FINALLY hits the acceptable quality mark. A great slow song that isn't dull and boring that nearly has the charm of "Friends". Could we finally be getting to the meat of this recording session? Well to answer my own question yes this is the meat of the album. A couple more good songs appear and things are atleast not making me regret buying tickets to see them live on this tour. You get a run of decent songs up to and including "Last Call". Then the complete garbage ballad called "I Won't Let You Go (Darling)" rears its ugly head and well back to the shite at the beginning we go. I admit I hated "Perfect" on The Show Must Go as well so I'm sure this song if a single will probably sing to all the tweens who think the world will end if their highschool boyfriend dumps them or that are going to spend the rest of their lives with some kid they met in the first month of school this year.

After the big giant dump the band has with that ballad they pick up the quality again on "Hiding Place" which nearly covers up the stench of "I Won't Let You Go (Darling)". The albums best song is the Beatlesque "Carry On" and nothing on this album is even close to as good as this song. I would have heard this track and then sent them back to rock n' roll writing school to make more just like it. See that's the problem with this record and it being so disappointing is that I know they can write great pop rock tunes. They don't have to be like most other acts and age a little and turn into a ballad act for radio play success. They are talented enough and cool enough to be a longterm act that enjoys major success for the next ten or twenty years. The album closes with two remixes of weak songs unnecessarily added to the make it deluxe version.

Overall I'm still disappointed but I am sure as the singles roll out to radio in Canada that I will enjoy some of them. I will never listen to Storms in its entirety again because it isn't good enough. I can only hope that this is not a signal of the future and only a hiccup in what should be an illustrious career to come making them one of Canada's best bands.