Finley Quaye
Much More Than Much Love
Sony UK
Finley Quaye has done something remarkable. He has written and recorded an album of guitar-based pop so vapid that it could be considered a sort of non-music, no different from the silence of having the stereo switched off. It fails to engage the listener on any level: mental, emotional or visceral.
From beginning to end Much More Than Much Love is packed with fatuous “sunshine through the rain” and “new, beautiful world” type clichés (just consider the album title) and limp, catatonically repetitive melodies. It isn’t remotely challenging. It isn’t necessarily pleasant. It doesn’t even have the negative appeal of being offensive. Tasteless, colorless and odorless, it simply slips past the ear like lukewarm water.
All this makes finding a critical foothold impossible. The album just is and nothing more, occupying some kind of neutral vacuum-like space. This stuff is a long way off from the acclaimed – some might even say pioneering •- rasta/dub hybrid work that Quaye was putting out not long ago with Vanguard. What Much More Than Much Love amounts to is little more than the soundtrack of a change to a more wholesome image.
Finley Quaye: http://www.finleyquaye.com/ • Sony Music UK: http://www.sonymusic.co.uk/
