Posted on: March 26, 2009 Posted by: anfnewsacct Comments: 0

Pixieish rock that has as a vocalist a woman who tries her hardest as an Enya imitator, but really falls into the rut of having a lot of her acoustic guitar lines sound similar. As a result, the amazing singing that is done on the disc is really obscured by the repetitive guitars.

Another specific issue that can be at fault for making this CD fall short of its expectation is the fact that every track has the same sedate feel to it. There are simply not any changes in tempo on this disc, and I would guess that pretty much every single listener, save for the most hardcore fans, will get tired of the same dreamy indie-rock after the 6th or 7th iteration of the same style of song. She maintains her same sort of monotone in voice and song with a track in partially in German, that being “Take That Back”. The lyrics on this disc are also nothing special, the same sort of divided thought that marks pretty much all bands on the indie-emo axis; samples include “stop gasping the air supply in here is fine and even if you try to you can’t cram anymore into your lungs” and “open up your eyes it’s a lie”. While I was hoping that the second half of the disc, “the public eye”, would see Elaine trying to do something else with her skills, the sad reality is that these songs are virtually copies of the earlier songs, save some electric guitar thrown in here. If I had to say something positive about this disc, it would have to be that Elaine sticks to a musical style throughout the disc, not trying to go into all forms of music and fail miserably.

Top Track : The Okasake Orange-Ade Concern

Rating : 5.0/10

Big Thick Skin – “Private Life and the Public Eye” /11 Tracks / 2002 / Novelty Horn Productions / [email protected] / http://www.bigthickskin.com

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