Dienstag, 24. Mär 2009, 2:22
Written by Andrew Hart from Rawkfist Music
I was a bit of a latecomer to the fad of piano rock, not really learning of it’s potential greatness until introduced to Dropping Daylight’s unique brand in 2006 (look ‘em up, this review isn’t about them). Since then however, it’s been easy for me to develop an appreciation for the craft, which typically adds much-loved melodies to hard rock tunes. So when I stumbled across Reality Addiction and discovered their penchant for piano playing, I was immediately intrigued. Intriguing was most certainly what I ended up with too, once I gave their debut album Maybe Now You’ll Listen a spin.
Reality Addiction picked a damn good opener with “People Die Building Bridges.” The opening riff is unique and sure to grasp your attention just as much as the crisp vocals and great lyrical content. Anyone who says rock and roll is all about sex, drugs and women forgot to tell Reality Addiction, who go out of their way to fill songs with meaningful content. Sure there’s still a lot of sappy songs of love lost or found, but at least they make an effort to have it sound unique. As it stands the lyrics are definitely one of the highlights of Maybe Now You’ll Listen.
This is even more evident on the follow-up track “The Story of You and I,” which stands out as one of the most complete songs on the album even despite some cheesy vocal harmonies at the end. It works as a really powerful early album ballad, and becomes a formula Reality Addiction will attempt to repeat multiple times throughout the album. The exactly-what-it-claims-it-is “A Sad Song” is the first example of this which really gives it the proper twang of emotion thanks to some beautiful piano playing, though the vocals are lacking the best range to truly throw some passion into the song.
Maybe it’s because of that fact that so many of the album’s songs fall flat when it appears they shouldn’t. The best work on the disc is no doubt the unique drumming of Ben Antelis and the perfect backdrop of the piano from Max Green. Neither one is overpowering at any point on the album, but both really move each song along and get it as close to its potential as it can go. The problem is that despite Dustin Widofsky’s crystal clear voice, his range isn’t very big, and his inability to really nail some higher notes makes a lot of the songs fall flat even when the other instruments are playing out of this world. This combination sadly leaves a lot of unmemorable tracks on the CD, from “Smokescreen” to “Bleeding Through.”
There’s a lot of good stuff going on with Reality Addiction though. The band is relatively new and has the potential to make a big splash thanks to some great song-writing and brilliant incorporation of piano and keyboards. As a mostly soft album, songs like “A Little Light Please” and “Almost Beautiful” are really wonderful sounding songs with proper use of the piano, and every song on the album sounds good. Really though, sounding good will only get you so far, and the lack of memorable hooks and varied vocals push Reality Addiction closer to the bottom of the barrel than they probably deserve. Maybe Now You’ll Listen is a solid debut effort, but Reality Addiction will want to refine a little more before their next disc drops.
6 out of 10 - Download “The Story of You and I”
Reality Addiction is –Dustin Widofsky – Vocals and Guitar, Robby Tal – Lead Guitar, Jonathan “Sheep” Schevelowitz – Bass, Ben Antelis – Drums, Max Green – Piano, Keyboard
Reality Addiction
Maybe Now You'll Listen
The Story of You and I