Wednesday, February 1, 2006

CD Review: Belafonte’s Any Place is Better Than Here

By Brent Herndon

Feeling disconnected is the theme of Belafonte's debut release Any Place Is Better Than Here, but by no means are they depressing. Belafonte explores loneliness, laziness, loathing your hometown and other self deteriorating emotions and comes around full circle with light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel pizzazz.

Brian Hedenberg's crisp and low key vocals are at times reminiscent of Bono from U2 and the beautifully arranged guitar and piano accompaniment have relevant influences in all of our favorite Brit-pop bands (Travis, Coldplay, Stereophonics, to name a few).

The song “Movin' On" is a simple break up song at first glance, but by the end of the track has transcended into an ethereal synth-guitar revelation of momentous despair, yet coping with moving on. The intriguingly piano-driven “If You'll Stay" takes a look at departing lovers in an airport. With the lyric, “If I could make this moment last, then I wouldn't need this song," Belafonte drifts into the ironic implications of life and music intertwined. They play with this idea again in their song “Slacker," a closer-to-home rock song about viewing the world from a different angle. A real treat on the album is the live recording of “Let's Be Poor Together," featuring Johnny Lloyd Rollins, a high energy feel good song dealing with being in love and of course, being broke. A bit darker are the songs “Hard to Keep" and the INXS-sounding “As Hard As You Like It."

Belafonte is highly enjoyable and definitely stands out in the DFW music scene. They'll be touring quite frequently (or so it appears) in the upcoming year, but their next stop in our neck of the woods will be February 11th at Club Clearview and then March 24th at The Cavern. Could Belafonte be the next big thing? To quote one of their songs, well, “This pig’s optimistic."

Listen to Belafonte live at Hailey's on Saturday, January 28th

(For another point of view, Belafonte left a bad taste in the Dallas Observer's mouth.)

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