All too safe and unoriginal rock music
I sat with a wash of glumness over my face when I received an album called 'Mambo County.' The title 'Mambo County' conjures up Latin American dancing rather than a heavy rock album. But for some reason Soley Mourning felt it an apt mantle for their new release. Does it sound Latin American? Will it stir you to grab the nearest boy or girl and dance the rumba? Hell no, in fact it does little to stir you into doing anything, except perhaps stirring the bile in the pit of your stomach every once in a while.
We may not be in Mambo County here, but we're definitely in Nickelback, Creed, Bush, Puddle of Mudd territory, as Soley Mourning take us through a trip of heartfelt, girlfriend anguishing load of ole slush. At its rockiest it's reminiscent of Bush. 'Go' is pure Bush, yet it sounds like they made the song up in 2 minutes because they needed something to break up the power ballads. At its mellowest, the band are perhaps at their strongest. 'Sometimes' is a wonderful song and quite poignant with its lyrics concentrating around a car crash.
'Heaven Inside You' is another strong cut even with the clichéd warbling ballad chorus of "Never gonna let you be, never gonna set you free, in my mind there's time..." Over a third of the songs follow that safe American rock formula of mellow introduction, mellow verse with a 'crash it all in' chorus. Which is all well and good but Soley Mourning over eggs the pudding somewhat, causing the listener to lose interest hoping for something with a little more balls behind it. Sadly this never comes, but if 'Go' is anything to 'go' by then this is probably a good thing.
Soley Mourning are so unoriginal it's laughable. It's as if they've missed the nu-melodic rock boat five years ago and have been trying to make do ever since. They rip off most of the aforementioned bands somewhere on this disc, the biggest crime being the obvious reworking of Pearl Jam's 'Jeremy' on the track 'Heathen'. 'Heathen' also contains an appalling scratching solo, something that died out with Limp Bizkit at the turn of the millennium. I suspect from this nugget of information you can understand where Soley Mourning are coming from.
For all the band's clichés, unoriginality, stagnant song writing and tie wearing members (Nobody in rock music should ever wear a tie except Rammstein), Mambo County is a pleasant, safe and radio friendly disc, which is probably what it was written for. It's the sort of album you play to your mother to show her that not every album in your collection goes RAH RAH RAH. Apart from a couple of tracks, it's pretty standard stuff that doesn't challenge any of the body's senses. One final note of merit must go to the hidden track at the end of 'Tomorrow Never Comes', which is both well written and sufficiently different to the rest of the album. It's a pity they didn't include it in the middle of the track listing to break it up a little. It'll probably sell by the bucket load on the other side of the Atlantic. In this country however, I suspect five, maybe six, copies will do us all.