Posted on: March 18, 2009 Posted by: John B. Moore Comments: 0

Long Island’s Danny Rocco aims pretty high with his debut The Future is Now, going beyond the staid and routine songs his peers have been churning out. Unfortunately he doesn’t always reach the intended heights. The acoustic strumming, singer songwriter (backed by the band End the Stars) starts the album of with the strongly original, addictive title track “The Future is Now,” but the rest of the album tries, and for the most part fails, to live up to that first song.

Rocco concentrates a bit too much on his obvious influences, everyone from Chris Carrabba’s Dashboard Confessional, to Maroon 5. The result comes off sounding more than a bit disjointed, and when he finally interjects some distorted, rock guitars on “Run,” two thirds into the album The Future is Now becomes a full-blown identity crisis. Before the album was even released, Rocco had inexplicable received some coverage from a handful of online punk music Web sites, so it’s obvious that his label is pushing him out as a pop/punk singer songwriter, a label that makes little sense, but at least is in keeping with his impossible to define style of music.

Top Tracks: “The Future is Now,” They Fight, They Fall”

Rating: 5.9 out 10

Danny Rocco – the Future is Now (CD) / Oort Records / 11 Tracks / http://www.oortrecords.com

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