Cack handed twaddle.
Collaboration is in many ways the test of many a band. Sometimes it offers a different slant on a familiar or even tired formula and breathes new life into things previously visited or, even, cliché. Take one look at aging rocker Robert Plant and country bumpkin Alison Krauss doing tired old blues numbers • it shouldn't work but it does. But this is somewhat of a double edged sword. For every Fairytale of New York, there's The Only Flame In Town; for every Up Where We Belong there's Ebony and Ivory.
The choice for Rosolina Mar to work with Truman Water on a short collaborative album is a curious one. The usual norm for these things tends to be successful artists that are known and loved for their body of work, making a buzz of excitement around the impending release. However, two relatively unheard of bands coming together to make sonic sounds hardly offers much in the way of waves. In fact, in is debatable as to whether this is a true collaboration at all. There is little evidence of the two groups working together on the record as one body or unit, instead the album offers two EPs by two separate bands tacked together under the name of a long player.
But surely this is a matter of definition and should bear no relevance to the quality of the music contained within the ten tracks offered. But the sad fact is that it does offer a sad indictment onto a record that has been poorly judged and is mismatched and, ultimately, pointless. The production is uncompromising and offers some level of frenetic passion in its rawness, but to the majority of people this will sound like nothing more than noise.
It could be argued that “Rosolina Mar Meets Truman Water” is a good, contrasting mix of the same style, one being brash and cocky, the other bing brash and semi-melodic. Sadly, I'm not going to be arguing that point. The album suffers from being too short, too unbalanced and, frankly, too meaningless. If the two artists could have come up with a proper collaborative effort and brought their new individual talents to the floor then it could have faired better. But as it stands, “Rosolina Mar Meets Truman Water” is questionable at best and just plain rubbish at worse.