Satellite Soul's follow-up to its self-titled debut reveals more of its interest in acoustic instruments like dulcimers. Reminiscent in a way of the Wallflowers' brand of roots-pop, Satellite Soul is unfortunately not able to pull it off with quite the same success.
The gentle dulcimer on the introduction to "Revive Me" is fairly pleasant. Tim Suttle's vocals are tuneful and sound impassioned from time to time. But the kind of music that Satellite Soul is aiming to make works much better when the instruments aren't surrounded by sequenced sounds. While the heavy-handed production may have seemed to make commercial sense, in recent years other bands have shown you can have commercial success and a more stripped down sound.
To be fair, Satellite Soul does have a nice turn of phrase from time to time but in this production context the songs don't stand the test of repeated listening. The end result is a rather dull album.
1.5 tocks
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