The Leader

Issue date: 11/8/06 Section: Music

Carbon Leaf seem to have a formula for making music. Create, suck, sell, repeat. Their latest studio album Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat is a testament to how corny music can really be. These guys surprisingly have a pretty good track record for the most part too, once opening for bands like Dave Matthews Band, OAR and even David Gray. But even with a slew of lame corporate awards like the Pontiac Vibe Summer Sound-Off Campaign Winners and the Coca-Cola New Music Award, Carbon Leaf's latest is an insult to bands trying to make a living. Think about a band who is slated as an adult album alternative music group and you can pretty much get the idea. Carbon Leaf's Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat is basically a discombobulation.

Carbon Leaf sound like a mixture of Lifehouse, the Calling, Switchfoot and a dash of some bluegrass and country, a great misfortune for Carbon Leaf because, as hard as it is to believe, those bands make better music. Take, for example, the title-track. Lead singer and lyricist Barry Privett sings "you know the seasons ought to be/Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat." Thank the lord Privett was not in charge of assigning names to the seasons because that might be the lamest line ever. This album is chock-full of terrible lyrical combinations like, "And when the high wind blows everything/ Like the lion attacking the spring/ I love you more than I'll ever let on." What does that mean? Seriously. The worst song however has to be "the War Was In Color" because everything about it screams pathetic. There are maybe three chords during the way-too-long six minutes and the lyrics are something else. "From the shock of a shell/ Or the memory of smell/ If red is for Hell/ The war was in color" tells it all. These lyrics are cornier than Steve Urkel trying to be cool, and, really, anyone can come up with stuff like that. See: "The words might rhyme/ Hey look I found a dime/ Pardon what's the time." You get the idea.

The only redeeming quality of this whole album, however, is the nifty little mandolin parts that are pretty catchy and charming. Unfortunately, the intro for "Comfort" lasts about 10 seconds. There even is a cool little acoustic guitar part for "Royal One" but, oddly enough, a closer listen will show it is really similar to "Comfort." The variation is there to differentiate but it's pretty close nonetheless.

Please Carbon Leaf, if you still make music after this album, try and make it worthwhile instead of piling on sappy lyrics and basic song structures.

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