Shoulders of Giants - Shoulders of Giants
By Nick Manteris · 0 Comments · Leave a Comment
The Las Vegas Critics have once again been contacted through this website and – based on our review policy – have been given another album to review. The self-titled album is Shoulders of Giants by vocalist Tom Crowley and guitarist/songwriter Brad Hammonds. Both artists have solo material on MySpace and Hammonds is also half of the duo Brazz Tree with violinist Brazz Swift. The music from all of these projects has a mellow, laid-back feel and seems to primarily focus on guitar.
I found Shoulders of Giants to be a very hit-and-miss album…or, more appropriately, soso-and-miss. This division is split almost at the halfway point, the former being mostly “miss” and the latter mostly “so-so.” If the tracks “Awake” and “Pain is Our Measure” switched places the line separating “not-so-great” from “average” would exist between them. On a positive note: this album from Shoulders of Giants rates much higher on my scale than the most recent U2 album, just to provide one specific example. (I can see the blurb now: “Las Vegas Critics thinks Shoulders of Giants is better than U2’s No Line on the Horizon.”)
- Score
- 50%
Brad Hammonds is obviously a skilled guitarist and Tom Crowley is not a bad singer (he just doesn’t do much for me personally – at all) and for the entire duration, his voice reminded me of something I could never quite place. (For the record, this may have had something to do with the reason that I didn’t care for it.) Also, I tend to gravitate towards female vocalists and darker themes – as I’ve mentioned several times in the past – and both of these (desirable) elements are missing from this particular album. It’s enough to make me wonder if the people giving us these albums to review have actually read anything that I’ve written because, more often than not, the music being shared doesn’t even seem to resemble something that I would rate favorably. Maybe they really just don’t care what I might say about their new releases. (There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?)
