Aqualung - Strange and Beautiful

Genre rock Publisher Columbia Records External Links Official Website Columbia Records

Maybe it is just that fact that Spring has sprung in my portion of the country. Maybe I'm having too much fun jogging by the Chicago lakefront and having mid-afternoon drinks at laid back restaurants as my company and I sit outside talking with incredible optimism about the coming summer months. Maybe if I actually had a car and didn't depend on public transportation I'd want to roll my windows down and listen to something upbeat and turned up loud. Maybe some guy that dubs himself Aqualung and mopes around a piano incorporating electronic blips and bleeps reminiscent of The Postal Service with lyrics so damn sad that Coldplay won't even touch them is just not my thing right now.

After listening to Strange and Beautiful a few times, I get it already. Matt Hales (a.ka. Aqualung) does sad bastard piano ballads really well. He stares off into the distance for the photographer shooting his album cover with a look of complete despair and wants you to cry with him on "Good Times Gonna Come" as he bitches "This is just one of those lonely nights." Pull yourself together Matty. Have a drink with some friends and bat those dreamy eyes at the nearest sweetheart decked out in a hoody and hip-riding jeans. Perhaps then you'll spare us the adult contemporary pap of "Brighter than Sunshine." The market is saturated with mopes sitting around a piano or clutching their guitars wondering what went wrong as they cry themselves to sleep clutching their Travis or Elbow albums.

Hales is sure to draw comparisons to Thom Yorke, and that is unfortunate because it might help him sell albums. The poor kids tricked into thinking they are getting something to tide them over until the next supposedly genius recording of the decade will have to deal with the pathetic whines of "Left Behind" and "If I Fall." I've had friends go through bad break-ups, but I feel that Hales is begging for someone to come grab him by his Gap blazer lapels and slap him around for the sake of writing a song about it. The most fun I had listening to this album was drawing devil horns and black eyebrows on Hale's pictures in the liner notes while listening to "Extra Ordinary Thing."

Maybe some people like sitting around and feeling bad about themselves year round. But when the temperature starts to rise and the days grow longer all I want to do is enjoy myself and the time I have with friends. People get dumped and get their hearts broken. I understand that. All I am asking is that record companies stop willfully paying these people to record their issues. Right when they walk in the door and pitch their sad sack piano balladry give them a good kick in the ass. The sun is starting to get too warm for this cold shit.