Rewired

Artist: Mike + the Mechanics
Label: EMI Int'l
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Format: Import
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 724357117524
EAN: 0724357117524
ASIN: B00025YHR0

Release Date: 2004-08-10

Rewired

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Tracks:

One Left Standing
If I Were You
Perfect Child
Rewired
I Don't Want It All
How Can I?
Falling
Somewhere Along the Line
Underscore

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Mike + the Mechanics

Customer Reviews:

Mike Rutherford--the true "sellout" of Genesis.......2005-06-11

Aside from Mike Rutherford's first solo album, 1980's "Smallcreep's Day" (which is very much resemblant of Genesis' "Duke"), he comes across as an almost completely different and nearly unrecognizable artist with his solo/ Mechanics projects compared to his contributions to the legendary Genesis. The main familiar element has tended to be Mike's rhythmically precise, looping guitar technique (I don't know how else to describe it). Mike & the Mechanics' music over the years has been relentlessly ultra-slick, ultra-contemporary pop-rock--with barely any detours at all, let alone interesting ones. Their albums generally have occasional bright spots, but are often exhausting, loaded with pedestrian songwriting, both musically & lyrically, & overproduction a-plenty. Anyone who thinks Phil Collins is a sellout who lead Genesis down the wrong path, or that his 2002 "Testify" album was lacking "real instruments" should get a good, ahem, "wake up call" from listening to this 2004 release, "Rewired", a sad disaster of an album. To put it a certain way, this is an album that makes the first Mike & the Mechanics album sound like "Abacab". Even on Phil's "Testify", he was clearly staying true to himself, making music that was homegrown, sincere, & largely satisfying. True, not every song on that album is a masterpiece, but there's solid songwriting, hooks, & TASTEFUL PRODUCTION to be found. The soulless ultra-'modern' production values that Mike embraces on this piece of dreck make him sound desperate. It doesn't make a lick of sense to me how any long-term Genesis fan can trash Phil's "Testify" (or any of his other solo albums for that matter) & proceed to shower praise on this album.

I don't know who's particularly to blame. The album was produced by Mike & Peter Van Hooke, but certainly Paul Carrack is no innocent bystander, even though this album sounds joltingly different from Carrack's solo work from the 2000s. Opposed to the first couple Mechanics albums where Carrack played the role of an outsider brought in to sing some leads, he's subsequently become a fully integrated member of the group. Here, they go as far as to deem this as a Mike + the Mechanics + Paul Carrack album on the cover, and he & Mike co-wrote every track on here (with others chipping in on certain tracks).

Listening to this album, I'm not sure what Mike is thinking... Is he desperately trying to strike it big commercially? Is he drinking some wine & having some fun with modern production stylings? Is he thinking that he's being innovative? Is he so burnt out that he doesn't know/ care what the hell he's doing? Based on the combination of songwriting & production, it sounds to me like an artist/ band, desparately trying to remain hip & contemporary, no matter how much it flaws the end product. In terms of songwriting, the album is quite familiar--songs that are supposed to be uplifting, yet are melodically limp & lyrically shallow (and on "The Perfect Child", gratingly lame-brained). The things that really make the album such an utter headache... First, not only are the tracks weak to start with, they're so bloated & go on way too long as if there was a law that they have to run at least 4 & 1/2 minutes long each (often, they're over 5). Second, they ran rampant here with techno/ electronica/ whatever "influences", filling up the album with grating sound textures & synthetic percussion that further suck the life out of the songs. It isn't simply because it sounds "modern" that I hate it--they did some respectable "updating" of their sound on the previous album, "M6"--it's because it sounds terrible; it's displeasing to listen to. You can just sense you're in trouble as soon as you hear that robot-style vocal effect on Carrack's voice on the opening song, "One Left Standing". It's not true that there isn't a single moment on the album with some promise--on another day, on another album, IN ANOTHER TIME, Mike could have perhaps put them to decent use, which is damning with faint praise indeed. This is Mike Rutherford here, a key member in one of the greatest bands of all time, Genesis.

It's rather scary to even think of where Mike & the Mechanics might head from here after this massively headache-inducing and disastrous attempt at staying contemporary and "hip". Don't even think about buying this album--it's a sad washout for Mike & The Mechanics.

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