Customer Reviews

Another Mellow Spring

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The vocoder revival continues! This album captures the quintessential 1970s/space/drugs/glam sound. But it's more vivid and rich than you remembered it, thanks to modern production. It's like stepping into a holographic Milton Glaser poster, like watching Yellow Submarine in surround-sound Dolby THX. Beatle-y mellotron and trumpet abound, as do soft Donovan/Nick Drake/Belle & Sebastian vocal stylings. Touchstones include Air, ELO, Cassius, even (gulp) Alan Parsons. "Paris Sous La Neige" could be this year's "Sexy Boy."

I bought this CD for only 5 bucks when Tower Records went under, so there's the chance that my bargain-basement price might make my review a bit on the sunny side. I enjoyed this CD a lot more than I thought I would, being fully prepared not to like it much at all. The songwriters and performers of Mellow clearly aimed to create a style of music that combines the softer elements of Beatles' psychedelia with the lounge/space-age orchestrations of someone like Hugo Montenegro, and for the most part they succeeded quite well. There's plenty of Mellotron used here, which means you hear lots of Strawberry Fields-like flutes and Moody Blues-like violin arrangements. Some of the songs, particularly "Mellow Part 1" could almost pass for Magical Mystery Tour outtakes. Towards the end of the CD, the mixing grows progressively bolder and more contemporary, and the last two versions of the song "Mellow" are particularly enchanting to listen to on headphones. These are the tracks I return to again and again.

As for the downside, there are some truly awful lead vocals on a handful of tracks. Sometimes this is ably disguised by a vocoder, but when they aren't they are some of the worst singing this side of William Hung. Unlike Zero 7, who wisely recruited fantastic outside singers for their projects, Mellow relied on in-house vocals and the non-instrumental songs suffer as a result. Still, the best tracks on this CD do indeed make it worth a purchase.

So, this is a CD that will appeal to you if you like chillout/downtempo arty pop ala Stereophonics, Zero 7, Massive Attack and, yes, Air. If you like this one, I recommend Mellow's soundtrack to the movie "CQ" which is an even better collection of Mellow's material.

Good solid album, though a little telegraphed at times. If you are at all familiar with Supertramp's "Breakfast in America", anything by ELO, Grandaddy, Stereolab or a ton of other bands I could name, then this record won't blow you away, because the entire package seems a little TOO familiar-- the vocal line from "Another Mellow Winter" is copped directly from the Beatles' "How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people"-- at times it seems like they are trying to rewrite every song in the 1967-68 Beatles catalog. But hell, I guess that's a pretty noble pursuit, in the age of Limp Bizkit and Eve 6... A decent package, sounds great on headphones, worth buying.

This French music really rocks....This is as close to a sequel to "Sgt.Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" as you will find.Every song could be a single.There's a lot of hat tipping to the purveyors of psychedelic past but that doesn't make it any less of a thrilling ride.It sounds pretty sincere and speaker crazy."Lovely Light" freaks me out totally.What a great frickin' tune! "Shinda Shima" oozes emotion and grace."Instant Love" bears Beatle horns and soft pillows of love."Another Mellow Winter" yanks Al Green and Annie Lennox out of their lovenest and makes them pancakes.A stunning,glorious debut.

Overall Assessment: The title of this one says it all, the music is mellow. I would buy it again.

When I first heard Shinda Shima (the song that introduced me to the band) in the Emerica "This is skateboarding" video I assumed it was an old group from the Pink Floyd era just doing psychodellic rock - but when I found out that they are a "modern" band I was shocked. This album is great, it really takes you back and has such a cool vibe to it. I recommend it to anyone who likes real rock or just good music in general. Atleast give it a listen, I'm pretty sure you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Too many BS reviewers try to compare every new album to albums of the past, in a vain attempt to sound like they know what they're talking about. Even if the songs resemble songs of the past, which not all of them do, it's irrelevant. A good song is a good song, irregardless. And good songs are a plenty on this CD. "Paris sous la neige" was the anthem of my summer. Stop overanalyzing music for once and actually listen to it.

Also Recommended: The Incredible Moses Leroy - Electric Pocket Radio; Elliot Smith - Figure Eight; Air - Virgin Suicides

Mellow is (was?) three French multi-instrumentalists, which is one more French multi-instrumentalist than Air, with none of Air's talent.

I remember the month this CD came out, and several of the "hip" music mags gave it rave reviews. Knowing full-well never to trust critics, I bought it anyways. Upon getting it home I quickly realized that at least one of those reviewers had only listened to the first song and wrote a whole review on the assumption it was all the same.

The first thing you need to look at is that track listing: you're paying full price for a CD with 11 tracks and four-count 'em four(!!!) are the same song!

Things actually start out OK with "Shinda Shima" which lopes along at a nice neo-psychedelic beat with vocoder-ized vocals and a guitar player who sounds like early Robert Fripp of all things.

The whole thing starts the downward slide with "Paris Sous la Neige," a song so horribly, gut-wrenchingly awful that the first time I heard it I tripped over my feet lunging for the remote. Later, in the interest of accurate reviewing, I forced myself to listen to the whole song. My opinion did not change.

The next two songs bring back the vocodor, which is an improvement over that "vocal" on track 2, but is starting to get boring. "Instant Love" is OK for a few seconds before those horrible vocals start up again. At this point the band simply packs it in, playing the same song over and over with a few bits of filler in between. Hey, Mellow: know what you get when you fill filler with filler? A whole lotta filler!

Avoid at all costs.