‘The Feel’ aims high but misses its lofty mark

By Greg Zeman
The Guardsman

Let me clarify this review by saying that Cassidy Haley’s album, “The Fool,” is not my proverbial cup of tea, and that my review may suffer from a lack of appreciation for his particular type of vocalization.

There is at least one song on this album—”Ride The Night”—that ruthlessly ear-wormed me (the hallmark of strong songwriting), and I am likely still trying to get it’s fuzzy guitar lead out of my head at the time of publication.

For my money, he seems to be a poor man’s Bono, and I mean that in the least degrading way possible. He has an obvious affinity for lost causes, and as the editor-in-chief of a print newspaper, I can definitely relate with that.

If nothing else, Haley’s liner notes prove he is an extremely passionate and grateful individual with a strong desire to share his art. He gets two stars, just for having the chutzpah to make a concept album, another for sincere effort in fleshing out an impossibly ambitious concept and a half-star more for “Ride The Night.”

Let’s just say I had to listen to A-Ha’s “Take on Me,” to get it out of my head … but that was a mistake. It always is.

“Fly” is by far the most thoughtfully arranged piece on this album. Its key strength—apart from being planted squarely in the center of Haley’s limited range—is the sparse instrumentation, which draws sharp focus on a hauntingly melancholy cello line.

That said, the digital effects on Haley’s vocals show like a zipper on Godzilla’s back and there are also randomly placed, clichéd, synthesized strings that feel obligatory and careless, occasionally detracting from the raw intoxicating magic of a real cello.

And I hate, hate, hate synth-strings.

“Spindle” has an intro that mercilessly rips off Led Zeppelin’s “In The Light,” a chorus that could easily have been lifted out of any VAST song, and a delay-drenched sound effect that almost demands that Alan Parsons take a paternity test. “Spindle” does not reinvent the wheel, but with it’s repetitive, one word hook, it does walk the razor-thin line between catchy and impossibly grating. Take that however you want.

The arrangement on “Daylight Breaks” is beautiful at first, with the viscerally satisfying hum of the cello dancing delicately with whispering vibraphone and the steady pluck of finger-picked guitar, but the digitally altered vocals stand out unpleasantly without extra sound to hide them. By the end, “Daylight Breaks” descends into over-wrought, this-is-the-big-finish synth strings (yuck) and “soaring” vocals.

And needless to say, the lyrics are petty, cliché dog crap about “lost love.”

It’s uncanny how familiar some of these song intros sound. The last similarity I will mention is that between many of Haley’s verses and those of Staind, except he lacks Aaron Lewis’ distinctive baritone guitar and vocals.

Incidentally, “Burn” sounds a bit like acoustic Alice in Chains with the nuts cut completely off.

“Ride The Night” sounds like Devo, Kraftwerk and INXS donated at the same sperm bank and, because of a filing error, all of the donations were injected into an artificial uterus grown from Trent Reznor’s DNA and wired to an 8-bit sequencer. And since nobody else wanted to raise this freakish, Frankenstein monster, it was adopted and raised by Paul Hardcastle—the guy who made that infectiously repetitive “Nineteen” song with the stuttering hook.

Incidentally, this is definitely the best song on the album—if it was a single, I’d give it at least four stars. If it was a woman, I’d buy it a drink. Even though I sincerely want to hate the shit out of it, I can’t stop listening to it over and over.

And that’s how pop music is supposed to work. I wish the whole album sounded like this… but I am pretty drunk right now.

In summation, if you really want to support local musicians (he is from Oakland) or if you’re just one of those people who wants to listen to artists nobody else knows about in an attempt to fuel your smug, self-important view of yourself as an alienated outsider, buy “The Fool.”

Just kidding, nobody buys music anymore. Download away, dickheads.