COMMON DREAM – Gravity

It is commendable when band’s first album is arranged and produced well. Today’s technology and especially quality of newcoming bands dictates serious approach and Common Dream, under flag of Black Flames Records, delivers mentionable release.

Sailing in waters of pop with electronic taste usually means soft melodies and bitter-sweet lyrics and ‘Gravity’ is, of course, packed with them. Some tracks have it too much even, and should be skipped - untolerable level of pathos can be found in ‘Everything and Everyday’ and ‘Precious Heart’. ‘Save Me’ sounds more truthful, and by paradox, adding acoustic and electric guitars fills it with even more quality. This song will certainly find the way to recognition and praise by the public. Higher level of skill continues with ‘First And Last’, and by now it is obvious that pure pop suits better to sensibility of Common Dream. And guitars. Should be fully exploited.Trying to sound as some well known bands simply doesn’t work – should be avoided absolutely.
With music hovering between underground genres, timeline issue has to mentioned: pop as we remember it has died in the eighties, synth-pop barely survived last decade and only modernised, updated and more meaningful version (advocated by Namnambulu or Melotron for instance) is adequate for 21st century. Common Dream has to evolve in order not to remain one of literally thousands of projects that remained just that - projects, hobbies, passtime fun. We’ll see if their next album will bring needed progress. Thus far, nice level has been achieved in professional production. Melodies are good as well, but abandoning templates and cliché styles can only bring improvement. I enjoyed good pop on this album, the rest is simply not convincing.