Gavin Rossdale - Wanderlust

stuck, nipple deep, in MOR hell

Album Review by Johnny Langlands | 16 Jun 2008
Album title: Wanderlust
Artist: Gavin Rossdale
Label: Interscope
Release date: 9 Jun

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” confesses Gavin Rossdale. Whether he’s referring to the Chippendale pose in the liner notes here or having deep pangs of regret over ditching his short-lived comeback band Institute for the sake of churning out this fat sack of cheesy schlock rock is unclear, but he certainly sets a dubious tone with this opening track to his first solo album proper. In the context of what starts out as a schmaltzy Bob Rock-helmed stab at glitch-hop and ends in sheer vocoder abuse, however, the word “proper” should probably be used loosely.

The sonic terrain Rossdale treads on Wanderlust at times verges on the tragic as his pro-tooled warbling (see the bridge to Forever May You Run) is so overproduced that he sounds more like Cartman having a spew than the man on the edge he so desperately tries to project. Frontline is more immediately palatable, but it’s soon unmasked as a transparent splice work of Clocks with Beautiful Day that shamelessly chases after that Tesco CD shopper pound. And if watching a few thousand folk waving around lighters in his name is Rossdale’s bag, then pledges of “running for ages,” “dying for you,” and “eating hamburgers to stay alive” will probably help keep him fastened to the arena rock bracket.

Sure. he might harmonise well with Shirley Manson in her 11th hour bid to winch him out of The Trouble I’m In, but it’s already too late: Gavin’s stuck, nipple deep, in MOR hell.

http://www.gavinrossdale.com