ALBUM REVIEWS
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ALBUM REVIEWS |
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The Blue Eyed Shark Experiment
THE FLUFFER SIDEWALK 7 16.8.10 @www.vanguard-online.co.uk
With food they say that the first bite is with the eye. A similar adage could apply with music – and this doesn’t look good. The cover art is blandly nondescript and cheap looking, with the song titles written in a very elaborate but basically unreadable Arabic font. The name of the artist is confusingly bizarre and the title of the album is awful – isn’t a fluffer some ignominious job in the adult movie industry? But to apply another cliché let’s not judge a book by its cover. Actually listening to the album is an entirely contrasting experience. Checking the blurb and the website doesn’t actually reveal the artist’s real name – at all times he’s just mysteriously referred to as the blue eyed shark (or BES for short) After a slightly noodling accordion heavy opening track which seems to be influenced by his Bolivian/Columbian upbringing, we’re presented with a whole roster of totally joyous pop songs – second track in ‘Goodbye My Little Friend’ sounding gloriously upbeat despite being about an obviously painful relationship break-up. He may not be the greatest singer in the world but he imparts into his vocals plenty of raw emotion – ‘Beautiful’ being an elegant heartfelt ballad. He mixes up vocal styles though, so things never become staid - on ‘Generation’ he even reverts to a partially spoken word Pet Shop Boys style narration. There’s also a good varied combination of types of tracks – most are basic guitars and piano led folk-pop, but ‘Jetplane’ mixes things up with a dancey electronic vibe. He signs off an invigorating journey with the self explanatory ‘Ticket Outta Here’. The real crowd pleasers though are the several fantastically buoyant pop moments such as ‘Tapdance’, ‘Look Back’ and ‘Rain’. Although it remains to be seen if he’ll get the chance to please any sizeable crowd - it would be an injustice if he didn’t. www.myspace.com/blueeyedshark |
