• Band / Artist : Blake Morgan
• Genre : Pop / Rock
• Sample Track Download : She’s Coming Down
• Buy CD : Artist Store
• Buy Digital Download : iTunes
• Rating : 8 out of 10

I’m a big fan of Lesley Gore, who records on the Engine Company label. Also on the same label and the label president is Blake Morgan, who also helped write and produce Lesley’s album. So it was interesting to also find myself with Blake’s album before me to review.

The album opens very strongly with “Only Anesthesia” which sounds extremely familiar. I could swear I’ve heard it somewhere before. This is a pretty good introduction to the CD, with loud guitars and that harder rock sound, accompanied by Blake’s, raw edged voice. This theme follows pretty much throughout the album. The next track is the very Nirvana sounding “Danger to Wake You”. In fact there’s a lot of rock influences throughout the album and they all nestle in very well.

It’s funny that my favorite track on the album, is also the track that seems oddly out of place. That track is “Better Angels” which was also covered by Lesley Gore on her Ever Since album and it’s when I got to this track that it suddenly hit me. The album tracks are in the wrong order. As I said before, they’re all really good songs in their own right, but something just didn’t gel with me and I think it’s because the tracks are (in my humble opinion) in the wrong order, which for me results in a sort of musical jarring when some of the songs transition from one to another.

Musically the production, results in an almost live sounding album with some minimal overdub on the vocals. This is my preferred kind of rock, because I can just imagine it sounding almost identical when played before a live audience and I love that.

Conclusion : Blake has a great rock voice, but also handles the softer songs really well. This is an album that’s a prime candidate to purchase as MP3’s, as it’s then so easy to rearrange the songs to suit. I’ve no doubt that what would be my perfect order, isn’t going to be everyone’s, but I think this is a small point. This is a great album, with some really great tracks.