A review of music!

As none of you will know i’m sure, I once worked for my universities newspaper the UniVerse as the entertainments editor, sadly these days I have moved onto bigger and brighter things. Anyway, I did write an album review, which come to think of it actually went in the uni’s magazine Blue Moon, so yeeeeeeeah, this is the review here, its slightly different in that I haven’t tried to be funny, there is also no swearing as it was for a newspaper and I wasn’t allowed, but i’ll make up for it here, TITS!!! Oh and also its a review of Simple Desire by All Mankind.

All Mankind are an Australian rock/indie band from Eastwood in Sydney, Australia. The group consists of Richard Beeston (vocals, rhythm guitar & keyboard), David Beeston (drums), Daniel Mayes AKA Dorny (guitar) and Gavin Perkins (bass)

I suppose they could be loosely called stadium rock, as I can imagine seeing them do a show with lasers and synthesisers over the vocals.

The band released their debut album Simple Desire on the 3^rd of October 2011 and on first impressions I was impressed. I must admit on hearing the opening track ‘Open Your Eyes, I immediately thought – is this the Killers? However as the album progresses, despite being noticeable, it does becomes less obvious.

Starting off with the second track, ‘Break the Spell’ which for me is one of the stand out tracks of the album (it’s also on the soundtrack for FIFA 12 gamer nerds!), I have to say, I do like the use of keyboards more and more in music now days and this song uses it to great effect to create a nicely rounded song.

Another song that grabbed my attention was the album’s title track ‘Simple Desire’ which sees a slight change in pace for the album, as the three tracks proceeding it were somewhat quicker and more jumpy. ‘Simple Desire’ slows it write down and provides a good opportunity to sample Richard Beeston’s voice which does stand up to many other singers out there.

As I have already mentioned, All Makind’s sound can be compared to that of the Killers, but there is also a touch of Coldplay and U2 thrown in. This is fairly noticeable in the albums middle tracks ‘Lover’s Song’ and ‘Can You Hear Me?’ – which for me is one of the weaker tracks of the album, mainly because it sounds a bit like a cheap knock off of a U2 track and as someone who isn’t a fan of U2 this did not go down too well with me. This is followed by another rather pedestrian track ‘To Live’ which again didn’t really excite me.

However the album picks up again with the next track ‘Magic Moment’ which is easily my favourite track of the album. The mixture of a slightly harder rock sound with occasional bursts of acoustic and softer rock certainly caught my attention, and it served as a good precursor to another favourite track of mine ‘Hollywood Tonight’ - one of the bands more lyrically succinct songs.

The final two tracks of the album ‘I’ve Been Looking For This’ and ‘Lay Me Down’ provide a fairly quiet end to the album, but I feel they serve as a quite relaxing conclusion as a whole.

So there we are that’s All Mankind’s ‘Simple Desire’ for you. All in all I would recommend this album to those who are fans of Indie music and who like to listen to bands such as The Killers, U2, Keane or Muse as this album is likely to satisfy your musical tastes. Despite a few teething problems which can be expected of a debut album it’s well worth a listen and you can find them on ITunes, and also check out their debut single ‘Break The Spell’ which is available on YouTube with its accompanying music video.

Ratings wise I am going to give the album a 6/10, but you never know that may change as I listen to the album more, as so often happens with me.