Green River Ordinance

Out Of My Hands

Written by: PP on 15/02/2009 23:09:57

Forth Worth, Texas based Green River Ordinance are only gearing to release their debut album "Out Of My Hands", but they already sound like seasoned veterans in the mainstream rock scene. Songs like "Outside", "Come On", "Out of My Hands", and in fact all tracks on the record, are ready made for massive rotation in radio stations everywhere in the world because they represent a textbook version of the pop rock formula that dominates the airwaves in most countries.

You know the drill: soft, semi-acoustic guitars drive forward gentle, medium tempo melodies, which are supplemented by mature clean vocals and singalongable choruses and predictably simple drumming on the background. Sounds familiar? You bet; bands like Goo Goo Dolls, Matchbox Twenty, Third Eye Blind, Vertical Horizon, Nine Days, Semisonic, and to an extent Plain White T's thrive on the exact same formula. But where especially the latter has failed to produce more than just one hit single, Green River Ordinance seem to be capable of delivering an album's worth already on their debut. While that makes the entire album sound like an incredibly safe bet with no artistic truth'n'dare experiments during writing and recording, on some level it doesn't really matter when the songs are played this convincingly. They aren't over-the-top charged with emotion or passion, but aren't played with a lackluster attitude either. It's as if the band are standing exactly in the middle of great and average, delivering what they're expected, but not much more than that.

I suppose the best thing about "Out Of My Hands" is how it sounds like it came straight out of MTV's classic "so 90s" program (or whatever it was called). Most mainstream rock bands are overproduced to the point where all feeling from the songs has dissipated entirely, whereas the 90s bands always sounded like the music had some soul in it. That's something I've been missing from the mainstream rock scene for years now, and I'm glad there are at least some bands out there trying to revive the strengths of the somewhat forgotten genre. Good job, even if a band in this genre will rarely ever score higher than a 7 simply because of the missing artistic value.

7

Download: Different (Anything At All), Outside, Come On
For the fans of: Goo Goo Dolls, Third Eye Blind, Our Lady Peace
Listen: Myspace

Release date 24.02.2009
Virgin Records

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