I'm a huge fan of the Beatles, and I'm especially fond of one of their old tunes called "And Your Bird Can Sing." Well imagine if you will being subjected to 14 different variations of "And Your Bird Can Sing" by an artist that doesn't quite match up to the Beatles, and you'll have a solid idea of what Jeremy's Pop Heaven has in store for your ears. It's not that Jeremy Morris (he plays every instrument on the CD except for drums) is a bad musician; actually his breezy guitar strumming lends itself well to the mid-60's style rythms he writes. As far a vocals go, Jeremy's voice is very ethereal and appropriate for the types of songs on the album (albeit a bit too layered at times). So while Jeremy's musical talent is fine, it's in the songwriting where this effort falls a bit short.
After giving the CD a few listens, it became almost impossible to distinguish one song from another - they pretty much all sound exactly the same. The repetitive nature of the music coupled with the fact that the melodies aren't very interesting to begin with is too much to forgive for this effort. The pseudo-psychedelia (think Monkees) on the CD quickly becomes very tedious, and the lyrics won't exactly engage your intellect much either("You don't fool me with your smile/I know you're a crocodile/You are just a great big liar/ I can see your pants on fire").
So in the end, while Jeremy is a talented multi-instrumentalist, it remains to be seen if he is capable of writing a wider variety of music. Perhaps if a more adventurous spirit is taken with Jeremy's next outing, he could make the next step to a "Matthew Sweet" style pop sound (which Jeremy sounds capable of at times), but as for now Pop Heaven is indeed pop... but it's very far from heaven.
Style: Fusion/Progressive Rock
Published: August 01, 2000
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