Stephen Egerton
The Seven Degrees Of
Paper + Plastic
5/10
I’ve listened to this album over and over to try to figure out what to say about it and I keep coming to the same conclusion. It’s not good. It’s not at all bad either, which is why it gets a five, but it’s boring. I’m not impressed. It’s one of those albums where a musician shows how important they are by having friends from all these other bands perform with them on an album. You know, sort of like Dave Grohl’s Probot, except not near as awesome because Dave Grohl is the man and gets guys like fucking Lemmy and King Diamond, whereas we get Tim McIlrath of sell-outs Rise Against on Egerton’s album. To be fair, Egerton can’t sing well so he didn’t have much choice in the matter.
The best songs on the album are the two country-fied numbers, “Fire’s On” featuring Jon Snodgrass of Drag the River and “Abundance of Fluff” with John Moreland. Again, that’s not to say there isn’t other decent stuff on here. The numbers with Chris DeMakes from Less Than Jake and Milo’s are both good, as is “Never Again” with Bill McShane from Ultimate Fakebook. It stands out as the power pop number on the album. Joey Cape from the Gimme Gimmes turns in a brilliant vocal performance on “When They Roam.” We don’t hear enough of him on vocals these days. But even these leave me feeling like the album falls short. Listening to it, I think most of the songs here could be featured on a soft rock station. That’s just bad news.
Well-written, regularly catchy, produced to perfection (possibly too much), but dry – it lacks the fervor, brothers and sisters!
–Luke Toney