Album Review: Agarthic - The Inner Side

Sometimes it feels like there are certain things that have to be done, if for no other reason than everyone already expects them. So rather than disappoint people by not delivering on something they will then criticize for being too predictable, they instead become all too predictable and give their project the air of being overly derivative. When it comes to symphonic metal, there are two things that feel almost inevitable at this point; wasting time, and guest vocals from Fabio Lione.

I don't know why every musician who uses orchestral or symphonic elements in their music considers themselves to be 'composer', and therefore thinks they are making high art. Turning the setting on a keyboard from a piano or organ to a string patch isn't anything to write home about. But like so many of those people, the musicians behind Agartha talk of how the music will 'tell stories', and how it will 'take you on a thrilling journey'. It doesn't, and it won't. Agartha's music is your standard non-progressive prog metal, albeit with a less fake sounding keyboard tone.

What gets my dander up is how their talk fails to be materialized. "The Ancient Secret Scroll" is the first real song on the album, and it's actually really good. It has a strong melody that sits in a lower range than a lot of this kind of music, and it's a rather rousing little number. Except for the fact that the symphonic bits are limited mostly to a wash of non-guitar playing root notes in the background. They aren't put to much use, other than as a filter to change our perception. Adding more detail to a good song doesn't always make it better. Sometimes it just gets muddy as more shiny candy is put on that only confuses our ears.

As the record continues to unfold, we get that attitude carrying over to the main thrust of the songs as well. The melodies flatten out and become more pleasant sounds drawn out, as opposed to hooks that anchor these songs as they float on by. Like a dirigible that misses its docking point, they make for a nice sight as they move along, and eventually they run out of air and fall in on themselves. That's a more entertaining way of saying there isn't a lot of meat on these bones. The songs largely aren't very memorable.

With the full metal band and the washes of various synths playing nearly all the time, there is also very little dynamics in the mix, leaving everything rather flat and loud, which becomes quite fatiguing before the album's hour long running time comes to an end. It's trying to be epic, but the grandeur of something properly sweeping and grand is missing. It actually sounds smaller and chintzier for the amount of effort everyone is putting in.

If you're looking for a late year gem to fill out your own list of favorites, or to pass some of the lull before 2022 kicks into gear, this probably isn't going to be the right album. It has some promise, and the one great song, but the other shortcomings are too hard for me to look past to say it's worth spending an entire hour's listening.

Singles Roundup: Kat Kennedy, Slash, Neal Morse's New Trio, & Tony Martin

Just because it's December, that doesn't mean music has stopped. Albums are few and far between this month, but we're still getting a bunch of new singles. Some might be considered Christmas gifts, but most are already getting the machinery moving for next year's first rush of albums. So what do we have in store for us today?

Kat Kennedy – Unpacking

Her previous single, "Party", is what first caught my attention. I loved the quiet, restrained mood that came through, taking echoes from Taylor Swift's "Folklore". This new song follows the same blueprint, with Kat using her voice as more of a quiet whisper. The song echoes the weary, tired feeling of moving on, rather than whatever rage may have existed at the moment the relationship blew apart. This is a sound I have dubbed 'Daria rock' before, and I keep finding myself drawn to the flat, 'over it' attitude this style thrives on. At least when it's done this well, that it. Kat has given us a nice little Christmas treat with this song.

Slash – Fill My World

The lead single for Slash's upcoming album is fantastic. This song is a bit different. Feeling much more like a ballad, this song is entirely about pulling back and not doing too much. Slash's playing is restrained, softer and with far fewer notes than usual, while Myles Kennedy never jumps into his highest and most questionable range. The song lacks a bit of punch, but it's nice to hear the group doing something a little different. This does nothing to dampen the enthusiasm for the upcoming album.

D'Virgilio, Morse, & Jennings – Julia

This year, I was listening to a fair amount of The Jayhawks, in particular because I was in a mood where I loved hearing Gary Louris and Mark Olson's voices blend together. Neal Morse must have been in a similar mood, because he has put together this trio with Nick D'Virgilio and Ross Jennings, and this first song is a lovely acoustic based song filled to the brim with vocal harmonies. It's a classic sound, and the ethereal way the notes float around one another is the sort of thing that makes music so wonderful. It isn't heavy, or cool, but it's beautiful.

Tony Martin – As The World Burns

I don't want to be harsh. Tony Martin is a great singer, but by and large, he hasn't had much opportunity to sing good songs, so his reputation suffers. If this song is an indication of his long-gestated solo album coming very soon, that's not going to change. He sounds great, even after all these years, but the song itself is nothing to care about. The riffs are fine, the production could use some more bite, but the failing is entirely with Martin's vocal lines. The verses are fine, but the chorus has no melody at all, and hits the metal paint-by-numbers thing that feels like little effort was put into making an enjoyable song. It's trite, it's cliche, and it's boring.

Album Review: The Murder Of My Sweet - A Gentleman's Legacy

I've heard a lot of bad ideas, but the one we're dealing with today might be one of the strangest of them all. This new album from The Murder Of My Sweet is a concept album. No big deal, right? It's also a sequel to another concept album. Still, that's happened before. However, this concept album is a sequel to another concept album.... by another band. That band is the other one driven by the same songwriter, but still, the idea of making an album that only makes sense if you listened to another album by another band is beyond my comprehension. In a day and age where getting people to pay attention to the music you write is harder than ever, why would you put up that kind of barrier?

My first thought when I heard the gimmick of this record was to ignore it. While I have had some enjoyable experiences with The Murder Of My Sweet before, I did not appreciate the homework assignment they were asking of me. I flat-out don't believe I should have to do research to get the full effect of a song or an album. But, since we're in December anyway, I figure I might as well see if the record is any good when divorced from the absurdity.

Like so many records of the kind, it gets off to a terrible start with a four-minute song that spends 75% of it's running time on spoken word and ambient sounds. It isn't really a 'song', and with another sixty-four minutes to come afterward, it feels like the band is intentionally trolling me. They certainly couldn't do much more to make the album less engaging to get into.

When "A Ghost Of A Chance" kicks in, everything changes. Forget about the story, and the song is a wonderfully sweet and melodic metal track that perfectly fits Angelica Rylin's voice. The strings that come in from time to time are nice accents, as is the very prog keyboard solo, but everything is centered on the melody. This is what The Murder Of My Sweet has always done best, and they do it again here.

The songs that follow, "Damnation", "Wheels Of Time", and "Kill Your Darlings" are cut from the same mold, delivering an almost cheery form of melodic metal where the hooks are warm and inviting. It's much in the mold of AOR, if that genre didn't sand off any and all edge from the sound. Song after song, the band delivers exactly what we want from them. The album is engaging, with a hint of drama, and more than a dose of beauty.

Yes, that means once again I am coming down with a split judgment. On the one hand, "A Gentleman's Legacy" is a very fine album of melodic metal that holds strong appeal for anyone looking for a hooky and memorable record. On the other hand, I don't think it succeeds as a concept album, for the reason I explained at the start. As a stand-alone work, I definitely enjoyed listening to this album. But it isn't a stand-alone album at all, which continues to be puzzling.

And also, if the album is about the gentleman's daughter, why is the title framed entirely around him? An album about her should, you know, make it clear it's about her.

Album Review: Volbeat - Servant Of The Mind

I've had quite the up-and-down relationship with Volbeat. They are on my list of the most inconsistent of bands, going from some epic heights to some truly boring lows. "Rock The Rebel/Meet The Devil" and "Guitar Gangsters & Cadillac Blood" are awesome albums, and I for one enjoyed "Seal The Deal & Let's Boogie", but everything else falls flat. I don't quite understand it, either, since it isn't as if the band is changing things up in ways I wouldn't like. They simply don't always write songs I find myself enjoying. Whether they're trying to be heavier, or more pop, isn't important. Volbeat is destined, I think, to be a band who serve as a reminder how fickle art and the creative process are. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

So coming off yet another of their albums I wasn't a fan of, the band is going to try to right the ship with several tracks going back to their heavier, metal roots. Sounds promising, right?

Yes and no, is the answer. Having a little more attitude is welcome, but Volbeat has been playing with such clean productions for so long that even when they do try to dig in and be heavier, the sound doesn't allow the record to have the same kind of crushing sound as their early years. Take the opening "Temple Of Ekur" as an example. The main riff to the song is a bit of palm muting that would be right in line with anything off those early records, but between the tone and the mix, it comes across weak enough it barely sounds like they were hitting the strings while playing the song. This is where perfect is the enemy of the good. I like the song, but it shouldn't sound this soft. A few flaws might have given it some personality.

Repetition has become a problem for Volbeat, as well. There are a few melodies here and there that sound too familiar to long-time listeners, which has been popping up on the last few records too. But the biggest issue is "The Sacred Stones", where the entire intro is essentially Volbeat playing Ghost's "Cirice". The riff has a similar tonality, and with the particular cymbal hits in the background, it's way too similar for my liking. It would be one thing if it was a deep cut you could say they never heard, but "Cirice" was (for a modern rock song) a big hit. It doesn't feel quite right to me.

Nor does the album as a whole, if I'm being honest. Whether it's the old-school piano and sax in "Wait A Minute My Girl", or the surf guitar that leads "The Devil Rages On", these songs quite often don't have any sort of energy behind them. It truly sounds like the band going through the motions, as if these are the twentieth take of every song they've attempted, and they're tired of playing them. When the choruses come along, the songs never swell into the big moments we've come to expect. Part of that is the lack of sticky melodies, but part of it is the way they're delivered. Volbeat has become too tame for their own good.

And with this album running an hour long, that sense of ennui becomes intolerable. The album is solid, don't get me wrong, but to spend that long listening to a flat album devoid of highlights is dangerous. Trying to keep my focus as song after song came and went without grabbing my attention was the sort of effort a record shouldn't require.

Ultimately, thsi album comes across as a lithograph of a better Volbeat record. Whereas a painting has brush strokes and layers of paint that give the eye depth and texture to admire, this album is akin to the flat recreation that gives us the gist, but none of the details. It sounds like Volbeat, and it's enjoyable enough in its own right, but it's a far cry from the heights of Volbeat I still go back and listen to.

In other words, it's not a surprise at all.

EP Review: Smith/Kotzen - Better Days

I was not expecting to get more music from Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen this year. In the spring, they released their debut album, which was one of the biggest shocks of the year. And considering that Iron Maiden put out their new record this fall, and Richie has been writing again with The Winery Dogs, this project didn't seem destined for a quick turn-around. And yet, here we are a few months later with four new songs to prove to us their record was no fluke.

The title track leads things off with a bluesy riff and groove underpinning Adrian's vocals, before strumming chords take over and Richie sings the melodic chorus. Along the way, they both throw in some lead guitar licks, reminding us this is as much about having fun playing guitar together as it is writing songs. For once, I don't mean that as a criticism. They clearly enjoy playing off one another, but they always do so in the context of the song. They aren't interesting in playing for playing's sake.

"Got A Hold On Me" ups the tempo, fitting in with "Solar Fire" off the album. To me, that was the weakest song of the bunch, and this one follows suit. There's something about the way these two play and sing that doesn't quite mesh with the faster tempos. I won't say you can't have soul playing faster, but it doesn't come across as well on this song, that's for sure. It just doesn't feel as vital or important.

"Hate And Love" returns to their sweet spot, with a slinkier riff and a real sense of dynamics. When Adrian and Richie share some lines, it reminds me what's missing from this EP. There aren't as many obvious harmonies between the two, whether that's their actual vocal approach or the production burying them. That was such a key part of the album's sound, I have to say I miss hearing their voices blending together as well as they do more often.

Finally, "Rise Again" serves almost as a segue to the next chapter, as things make a dramatic shift towards a more technical style of playing. The bass opens with an acrobatic line, which the guitar later echoes, while the drums move along playing far more than on any of the other tracks. What I'm saying is that, other than Adrian's voice being included, this one sounds like a song from the next Winery Dogs album, not what we've gotten to know of Smith/Kotzen.

So while I appreciate these two releasing more songs this year, I'm not sure this EP is quite what I was hoping it would be. There's less focus here, and the sound the two had established on their album is put aside in favor of some experiments I don't feel worked out all that well. Two of the songs tell us they were not a fluke, while two tell us maybe they were. It makes for a bit of a disappointment, hearing them veer from the winning formula.

Album Review: Sion - Sion

It's a bit sad when an entire genre gets boiled down to only one band, because having nothing that measures up means everything comes up short, and everything feels disappointing. That's what happened to me when I heard Killswitch Engage's "The End Of Heartache". They so defined the idea of what metalcore was to me that nothing else I heard was ever going to live up to that expectation, other than the two albums that followed from themselves. I've tried here and there to explore what's going on, but the gravity of that era has never let me escape its orbit.

So it was with great excitement that this year not only brought us a new Light The Torch album, but now a full-on return to metalcore from Howard Jones in the form of Sion, a collaboration with YouTube creator Jared Dines. For those of us of the right age, who were listening at the right time, this is a nostalgia bomb of the highest order, even if it is updated with all the modern bells and whistles.

"The Blade" kicks things off in high gear, with Howard roaring over a heavy groove, sounding as good now as ever, both spiting rage and wrapping his melodic voice around the chorus. The music Dines gives him is influenced by Killswitch, but the riffs have evolved from the chugging patterns of the past to something with more technical proficiency to it, even having hints of the deathcore scene poking through. The music demands the vocals we get, and the pieces fit together beautifully.

"Drown" follows by showing us the two aren't playing by any sort of blueprint. This song is softer, more atmospheric, with the heavy groove only bringing harsh vocals in for the bridge. Dines' guitar tone is dark and heavy, but so tight you can feel his pick attacking the strings. He controls the rhythm of the songs, which is exactly the way I like to hear my metal. They made the album independently, but it's one of the best sounding records of the year. The recording and production is spot-on, and puts every hook and riff right in your face with nothing to stop it from punching you in the mouth.

As more of the record unfolds, and we hit songs like "Skyfall", it becomes more clear this record is actually a hybrid of Killswitch Engage and Light The Torch. It takes the heaviness of the former, with more of the radio-leaning melody of the latter, and puts them together into an intoxicating mix that ebbs and flows, sticking and moving as we get beaten into submission. Do the first notes of the chorus of "Skyfall" echo "Bring Life" from all those years ago? They sure do, and that little twist shows us just how faw we have evolved since then. It may have been unintentional, but I find it to be a crucial moment.

When the first Light The Torch album came out, I talked about how it was the natural continuation of Killswitch Engage's 2009 self-titled album, and I loved it for taking us down the more melodic path that was being signaled. I love this Sion album for a similar reason, because this is the album that could have come afterward to 'course correct' and appease those who wanted that band to be heavier again, as well as those of us who wanted them to be even more melodic.

What's clear listening to this album is that Jared Dines is a huge fan of those records, and Howard Jones hasn't lost a step since then. Together, they are reliving the glory days of metalcore, and doing it better than I think anyone could have imagined when this project was announced. I am the perfect audience to get what they were trying to achieve with this album, and for me, it hits the bulls-eye. This is one nostalgia bomb that I have no intention of diffusing.

Non-Review: Lordi's Seven New Albums

This is not going to be a review.

Lordi this week are releasing not just an album, not just a second album of a pair, but rather SEVEN new albums. This has stirred up enough bile in me I feel like I need to rant a little bit, so that's what I'm going to do.

This all started with Lordi's last album, which was a fictitious compilation that imagined what would have been if Lordi had been around for all of the last forty years. It wasn't the best of ideas, but the execution of it is where things really went off the rails. Lordi has never, in my estimation, released a full album of great material even when they were just being themselves, so attempting to be ten different bands was something well beyond the scope of their abilities.

No one wanted to hear Lordi the disco band, or Lordi the yacht-rock band, and yet we got those songs anyway. Lordi's talents do not extend to those genres, so the record was filled up with songs that were exposing all their shortcomings. It was an experiment, which I can sort of appreciate, but it was an experiment that failed, which they should have realized before putting the record out.

That brings us to today, where Lordi was so in love with that concept they decided to expand on it. Instead of getting one record with all these styles on it, Lordi instead decided to spin off each of them into their own record, which means there are now seven new albums of songs to get through all at once. And the band wanted to make it ten, if not for the label stepping in to stop them.

This brings up three issues.

1. Does anyone think one band can write seventy great songs in one album cycle?

It's possible that a flash of creativity could come up that leads to more songs than every before in someone's life. That being said, seven albums in this day and age is anywhere from fifteen to thirty years worth of a career. Having a bit of experience with this area, I simply can't see how anyone can write that many songs with them all being their best work. When you hear stories about other bands that wrote thirty songs for an album before picking the best ones for the final product, it's almost always the case that most of the songs left on the cutting room floor aren't of the same quality. Every artist only has so many good ideas in their head, and it isn't often you can burn through this many this fast. As I mentioned before, Lordi never proved they could write twelve good ones for one album, so asking for six times that many is beyond belief.

2. Does anyone have the time or attention span to listen to seven albums at once?

We're constantly inundated with new music, movies, tv shows, and everything else under the sun. If we want to, there are enough albums being released to fill all day and all night without ever listening to anything we've heard before. So that leads me to wonder how in the world anyone is supposed to have the time to dedicate to seven Lordi albums all released at the same time. I don't know if I've had a single week in years where I've listened to seven new albums. We all have a limit how much new music we can absorb, and Lordi is exceeding mine, and I would assume most other people's as well. To ask us to spend seven hours listening to their music, when one listen wouldn't be enough to properly assess all this stuff if we are Lordi fans, is requiring a massive investment of time few of us would have. Even if we did have the time, I have to imagine that many songs would all start to blend together, which defeats the entire purpose.

3. What purpose does this serve?

Flooding the market with music very few people will ever listen to doesn't seem like the best of ideas to me. While they generated a few headlines simply due to the absurdity of the proposition, the lasting impact of this experiment is going to be non-existent. If this was an attempt to try to boost streaming numbers by giving people so many new songs to check out, I can see where the idea might have come from, but I fear it will backfire. After hearing that much Lordi, people are very likely to be sick of them, and wanting them to go away for a long time. That wouldn't be what they want. The other thing option is that people will see that many songs, and decide it isn't worth bothering with any of them if they aren't going to listen to them all. That also wouldn't work out well for Lordi.

I fall into that last camp. I'm writing this piece as a gripe, but also as an explanation for why I didn't listen to a single note of these seven new records. Frankly, with how much of my time and energy it would take even to scan through them to see if there is anything worth listening to, it wasn't worth it.

Giving Thanks (For Music)

With Thanksgiving upon us, this is the season of giving thanks and appreciating all that we have. With that in mind, I thought I would take a moment today to stop and think about what in the world of music I appreciated most in 2021. That would be...

My memories.

This year, more than most, I have spent a lot of time thinking about and listening to the music of my past. It was prompted by the number of albums celebrating milestone anniversaries, which you may have noticed in the increased number of essays about them, but it went beyond that. Talking about older records led me to listen to more of them, which then got me thinking about the different relationship I have with music now, as opposed to then.

I pulled records off the shelf I haven't listened to in a decade or more, and it astounded me how much from them I remembered, as opposed to the records of similar quality I listen to these days. Music made a deeper impact in those days, and I'm not entirely sure how much of that to attribute to the psychology of when they were heard. I know our teenage years are when taste is shaped, and when we are most susceptible, but I don't think that fully explains it all.

There is the issue of our heads filling up past the saturation point as more and more music is released and listened to. There is the issue of how we listen to the music, with it becoming more disposable as it shifted to being digital and free. There is the issue of how many chances any record gets these days to make its mark on us.

There is also an issue of life not feeling like it has the same kind of moments anymore. As I was writing those essays about old albums, I can remember what I was thinking and feeling as I heard those albums for the first time, or what moods they were used to pull me out of. Most of them still serve that same purpose. I can't say the same thing about almost any album from recent years. If I think about what I felt when I pressed play on any of them, there isn't anything to find. Part of that is due to this role as a critic, where I'm approaching music from a more analytical mindset, but I think part of it also is explained through psychology.

Much like how there is a saying about there only being seven types of stories, with all of recorded media being variations of them, I'm of the belief there are only so many forms of emotional response. Once we fill those with albums to assuage us, there isn't room for more albums to fall into the same role. Not unless they are outright better than the ones we drew the blueprints from, which we know is difficult, given what we already said about our formative years. That doesn't happen often.

So I am thankful to have the memories of those albums, what led to them, and what they do to me. Without them, there are times when it would be harder to find the right outlet to vent toxic thoughts and feelings. Knowing what works, and what has always worked, comes with a comforting knowledge it will work again when it's needed. Certain triggers are unavoidable, but they are easier to stare down when you know there is something waiting to pull you back up out of that darkness.

Those memories also serve to remind me why I keep searching out new music. Just because those moments are harder to find now doesn't mean they are gone. Songs and albums will still come along that move me, that say something I need to hear at just the right time. Music is necessary, and you never know what you're going to need until you hear it. At least I don't.

Having memories of the power of music gives me hope that the next one is still waiting for me around the next bend. I'm not a person of much faith, but I do still have faith in music, and that stems from the experiences of my past.

That's what I'm thankful for.

Album Review: Rhapsody Of Fire - Glory For Salvation

I lose track of how many times over the years I've talked about my issues with symphonic metal. Every time an album like this comes along, I find myself wanting to be swept up in the epic scope and mammoth sounds, only to be disappointed in the ways the orchestration and the metal are put together. It's more complicated than simply adding layers of strings to a metal song, which is something Rhapsody Of Fire should know from their history, but their history is a whole other story. Suffice it to say, there's a lot of headwinds for Rhapsody Of Fire to cut through.

First and foremost, for those who aren't dedicated fans, is that this is the second album telling this fantasy story. If you missed their previous album, like I did, you'll have absolutely no idea what is supposed to be happening, not that such is unusual for a concept album anyway. Writing lyrics that tell a story is hard anyway, so you might be lost even if you did hear that album. From what I could make of the lyrics to this one, it involves fighting in a snowy kingdom. I'm not entirely sure why they are, or why I should care about this place, but I actually find thinking about what the story is distracting when I'm trying to also enjoy the songs for their own sake.

The other distracting thing about the record is the symphonic nature of it, because it doesn't come across the way it should. The synth patches that often stand in for more organic sounding strings don't have the depth, or the class, a more traditionally symphonic approach would entail. There are points where the music wants to swell, wants to be an epic backdrop, but the production choices make it sound two-dimensional. They occupy the same sonic space as the guitars, so the entire record condenses down to the same frequencies, and it's only when you have a stringed instrument take the lead briefly, that the adornments sound vital to the proceedings.

When the album doesn't get bogged down, it can deliver some great moments. The chorus to "Terial The Hawk" is fantastic, and delivers a rousing metal hymn, without sacrificing the album's vision. Those moments are not as numerous as I would like, with much of the record sounding more like a conveyance for the story than an album we would want to listen to on its own. Such is the danger of conceptual albums, as trying to serve two masters can ensure none are left satisfied. Wait, did I just go BDSM in an album review?

Perhaps I did, because one of the thoughts I had listening to this album was chastity. No, not in the medieval sense of being pure, but in the modern sense of locking your junk up for the pleasure of a dominant. As this album goes on and on, for over an hour, I keep waiting for the time when the payoff comes and it's all worth the waiting and denial of pleasure. Then I realize that moment doesn't come, and we're left without the key to ever unshackle ourselves from the burden.

The only real reason to listen to this album is if you're a die-hard fan of the band, or for some reason you loved the story from the last one. Taken on its own, I don't hear much about this record that demands our attention. Bigger isn't always better, and this is another example of that.

Album Review: Adele - 30

Adele has broken time itself. Her music is timeless, sounding both thoroughly modern and utterly historic in the same breath, but it goes beyond that. Adele broke time by taking the entire music business back to its heyday, where the fever pitch building to an album's release was everything, and the sales exploded like the stock market in the dot-com bubble. To sell records in a time when records don't sell, and to do it by making music that goes against every notion of what is popular, is a feat of pure magic. It's almost as if she has the magical stopwatch from sci-fi stories, and used it to stop time long enough to put a copy of "25" in every household, before letting us wonder how her music feels so familiar.

After breaking sales records everyone assumed were relics of the past, Adele's newest takes on the similarly impossible task of being the defining 'divorce album' for the age of 'conscious uncoupling'. We have a deeper and more nuanced understanding of our psychology than we did in the days when bitter kiss-off songs were expected from any artist going through heartbreak. Are we ready for an album that takes the mature route, explaining that two people can grow apart and realize they don't belong together without there being any animosity between them? That's what we're going to find out.

"Easy On Me" made the case we could indeed do that. With a breezy sound and a vocal that toyed with being off-key on the falsetto runs, it was a raw and real embodiment of the emotions that come from even the best of bad endings. Adele is sad, but optimistic, asking not for our pity, but just a few moments to process what she has gone through. That's a mature way of looking at the situation, and when it's wrapped up in a gorgeous torch song, it comes across as the sort of lesson that should have been handed down through the generations, but never was.

Perhaps there is a disconnect here, however. Adele's power has always come from using her voice as a conduit for heartbreak and pain, and her more nuanced and dare I say optimistic approach to starting the next chapter of her life doesn't really fit with the strengths of the music she makes. "My Little Love" is a song about her son, and I'm sure it means the world to her, but between the slow to develop melody and the clips of voice messages that breaks up the flow, it fails to hold together as an engaging song. And stretching out over six minutes, it's simply too slow and cold a burn to set fire to kindling, much less the rain.

Then there are the backing vocals that open and often dominate "Cry Your Heart Out", which sound both shrill and auto-tuned past the point of death. It's such an annoying sound, tonally, that they stand in complete contrast to everything Adele has ever done. It doesn't feel natural, either in performance or in context of Adele's persona. I could say the same about "Oh My God", but it does at least follow the track taken by "Send Your Love (To My New Lover)". It doesn't dig in the same way, and the hook feels less potent, never giving Adele room to let her voice find her sweet spot.

Throughout the record, Adele feels too restrained. The songs don't take us through the full gamut of emotions she must have gone through, and her voice isn't allowed to tower over the music often enough, depriving us of the very gift that makes her so special. She described the end of her marriage as being tired of being unhappy, and that sense of tiredness is what I get most from the record. The end didn't come with furious anger, and the maturity that has been the best for her life has not been so fortunate when it comes to her music. This record almost sounds, well, small.

Other than "Easy On Me", the song that will become an Adele standard is "I Drink Wine", which is not only relatable for so many people (although not me - I cannot claim to like any form of alcohol), but a song that gives Adele the room to let her personality shine through. It's still laid-back, but this time because she knows she doesn't have to impress anyone. It just works here.

The thing about constantly raising the bar is that you will eventually put it too high to reach. The sales figures for "30" might indeed surpass anything we have ever seen before, but I can't say this record feels like a new zenith for Adele. I know I said the same thing when "25" came out, but that record had so much in it even on first listen that it's growth into her defining statement was not a surprise. I could have foreseen that, if I was trying to write for the future. I don't hear those same ores running through this record, waiting for me to hit upon them.

Maybe it's as simple as living two completely different lives, but I can't connect to these songs. It feels to me like Adele making an Adele record, rather than Adele needing to make an Adele record. This time, the torch is burning just a little dimmer.