Amy Regan - Gonna Get Better EP
By Nick Manteris · 0 Comments · Leave a Comment
Gonna Get Better is a new EP from Amy Regan, an unsigned artist from New York. This is the second release from her, in 2008 she put out her debut EP And Then There Is This. One of the songs from that EP, "Carry On," was used in a Hertz commercial – and it featured Amy herself using a Hertz rental to get to a music gig. Strangely enough, the best part of "Carry On" is the (slightly darker, less upbeat) part that Hertz didn't include in the commercial. (I know, right? What were they thinking using just the happy parts of a song to sell a service? Heh.) Well, she’s already released two EPs, one of her songs was in a commercial and she’s got a small start towards an acting career, so it doesn’t look like the 24-year-old Amy Regan is doing too bad as a fledgling artist.
Gonna Get Better only has four songs – the previous EP had six – and the musical vibe of this release just seems happier overall, which is unfortunately something that doesn’t usually work for me. In fact, “Gonna Get Better” didn’t do anything for me at all, but the positive message was okay (I don’t mind positivity in lyrics, it’s the happy sounds that fail to grab me) and she sounds like a slightly more country version of Sheryl Crow…which may or may not be something that you are into. “Keep You Warm” is a small step in the right direction – though not quite there yet – and it has some difficult-to-place elements that remind me of a song from one of Disney’s animated musicals or something. “Crazy” is a surprisingly happy-sounding description of going crazy and it stays on the same level as the song before it. “Just Once More” continues the plateau of average and ends the EP on the level established by the second track.
- Score
- 59%
Amy Regan is a talented artist – in addition to singing, she plays both guitar and piano – and she's got a lot of potential...I'm really curious to hear what she will put out next. The potential on Gonna Get Better, however, is much less obvious than what can be found on And Then There Is This. (Based on the songs she has streaming from MySpace, her website and the snippets on Amazon.com, I probably would have rated her previous EP 71%, for the record.) I wouldn’t be surprised if she experienced some positive changes in her life in the time between the two EPs – because of the slight change in tone – and that’s great if she did…it’s just that contented people don’t seem to write the really good songs. (Yes, I realize that “tortured artist” is a stereotype and I would love to be proven wrong in this case, but, from my experience, the unhappy artists are the ones driven to create the masterpieces.)
Full Disclosure: This EP was forwarded to us to review by Amy Regan's PR person, who also informed us of a full album to be released later this year. (OMG, she's got a PR person so she must already be on the way to super-stardom. That is how these things work, right?)
