Rose Kemp - A Hand Full of Hurricanes (One Little Indian)
3/5
By: Alex Lee Thomson
If we said that the new Rose Kemp album sounded like Regina Spektor fronting Muse we'd be pretty close... close but no cigar, regrettably. We'd love a cigar right now.
Although you can pull comparisons vocally to the US songsmith-ette, the perfectly bright voice of Rose Kemp isn't quite as poetic, important or generally listen-able, instead becoming too much too soon and at moments is hitting all the wrong notes. The basics are there, and to be fair 'A Hand Full of Hurricanes' is indeed a perfectly good album, but by not having either a prevailing or stunning enough voice to pull off the slower and faster moments respectively, it falls just a tad short of perfect.
What this album does have however is instants of pure hell fire, where all the nuances of the softly-softly singing approach die away, and you find yourself left with pasting metal guitars and Metallica-like riffs that weirdly work well with what is in some moments and almost gothic voice. This album is trying to be, and succeeds at being, the marriage of hard rock and haunting vocals but with a slight under-cooked Evanesence feel it again feels faintly incomplete and lacking in a real identity.
'Tiny Flower' features some mildly thought-provoking and often interesting harmonies and layered over a kind of White Stripes-like minimalist drum beat, one which dies and fades as much as the number's progressively imposing choral function. It leads in to 'Morning Music' which also manages to be worthy of being deemed 'OK', yet comes across as something which could be a Dresden Dolls B-Side...
Every now and again, more often during 'Orange Juice', you can feel yourself moving closer to the music on this motivating album, but every time you do you're dragged kicking and screaming back to earth with the knowledge that everything worth hearing has been done before. There might be plenty to sink your teeth into, but with an overly ambitious vocal 'A Hand Full of Hurricances' will not stay in your CD player long before cast onto that increasingly large pile of discs labelled 'average female vocalists'.
Stream two tracks from 'A Hand Full of Hurriances' HERE.
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