In a mainstream music scene that is pumping out the likes of Match Box 20 and the Goo Goo Dolls, the Arizona band Bare Wire is blazing a new trail with its latest album "Delicatessen". The first clue to the type of trail Bare Wire takes the listener on is shown with the bleak album cover that shows an obscured image of a female body.
What trail it is heading down could best be described by imagining the type of music that Bjork might make if she were cast as the music writer for a bad TV show similar to 'Twin Peaks.'
The image says enough. Bare Wire, while it blazes its own trail, doesn't do a very good job of luring in the listener, much less winning the listener over. It is simply one of the worst albums I have heard to date.
In the first song, "Verisimilitude," the singer and sole member of the band, Simone Grey, moans for a full minute before uttering six insignificant lines. Typically the first song on an album is the best one. Grey's one minute of moaning turns out to be the highlight of this album.
The album is dedicated to a man named "Henry" who is obviously the subject matter of most of the songs on this CD -- unfortunately for him and the singer.
While each song title appears to give the songs separate identities, the songs blur together in one constant theme of angst and wailing.
Grey seems to be obsessed about being "broken," "misspoken" and treated like a "token."
While many musicians have explored the themes of human misery and turned them into masterpieces, Janis Joplin is a prime example, Grey fails to reach that level of mastery of human misery.
Instead, the listener is dragged into Grey's endless agony song after song. One especially depressing piece is "Seaweed," which wails about a soul broken and washed upon a shore.
The song ambles aimlessly, broken with sound bites of sighing and metallic noises.
Whether it's a "human shore" or an actual one, Grey fails to build a mental image that pulls at the listener.
The other 14 songs that compose "Delicatessen" are unremarkable except for their common mantra of pain and sadness which the album manages to trivialize.
If you are looking for music that makes you want to bang your head against a wall or simply revolt from listening to anything at all, I suggest you put Bare Wire's latest CD in your stereo and leave it on repeat. Bare Wire's "Delicatessen" is a stink bomb not worth touching.
