Julie Feeney, Pages
Posted on 25th Jun 09 by Jonathan Keane | 
14
Galway native, Julie Feeney has been making some vibrations in the Irish music scene of late, particularly by winning the Choice Music Prize. A vocalist, multi instrumentalist and composer Feeney has made somewhat of a reasonable attempt to grab your attention. Pages is her second album, the follow up from 13 Songs and after such acclaim [...]
Galway native, Julie Feeney has been making some vibrations in the Irish music scene of late, particularly by winning the Choice Music Prize. A vocalist, multi instrumentalist and composer Feeney has made somewhat of a reasonable attempt to grab your attention. Pages is her second album, the follow up from 13 Songs and after such acclaim you’d think that the album would sate the appetites even more of her extollers. However, you’d be wrong.
Pages is a rather dull and attention fleeting affair. The release sticks to quite a rigid formula of song writing and that template is used on all twelve of these songs until you are sound asleep. Love Is A Tricky Thing, the lead single, displays this tiresomely. It offers little in the way of the musical majesty that her press releases and online bio so fervently talk up.
The track carelessly drifts into Impossibly Beautiful giving no acknowledgment to the listener. Both songs sounding the same don’t help matters. Feeney fails to incite any constructive artistry in the album, just sounding like she’s singing to herself in her bedroom.
Grace swaps more or less the same stuff, igniting no spark of interest. Valentine’s Song is the album’s poorest outing. Julie tackles mostly generic themes in her lyrics like then on Mr. Roving Eye Guy and Nothing To Declare, just detailing relationship struggle and unabashed love. Ending is Knock Knock which rather strongly sums up this uninspiring album. The song, like the whole album, is over produced and polished into the ground.
Pages downfall is that there is virtually no diversity in song structure and more specifically Feeney’s voice, maintaining the same tone and level adding more and more to the sleep inducing qualities of the album.
Julie Feeney’s Pages could be considered listenable but that’s not even a vaguely decent enough reason to care.
Drop-d Rating: 3/10
Tags: choice music award, classical pop, galway, Julie Feeney, Julie Feeney Pages
pages is a sublime masterpiece and clearly of a musicality far superior to anything you could ever dream of or begin to understand. Personally assaulting this artist to go against the grain for your own gain is pitiful.
No diversity in song structure, what about ‘Monster’ among others? This album has incredible diversity in song structure. Your comment stating that her voice maintains the same tone and level is laughable, have you not listened to ‘Myth’ or heard on the album that she sings,whispers,speaks shreaks, laughs in over four octaves……. Did you actually listen to this album?
The album is quite brilliant. She’s honed her style and talent since the first album and is one of the most original acts this island has to offer… BUT i can see how she wouldnt be everyones cup of tea. julie is a grower and does get under your skin with time
How embarrasing for you and you workplace to print such rubbish. Clearly you firstly didn’t listen to the album and secondly you have an edge against the artist.
Oh opinions… what will we do with ye at all at all?
Ohhh I cannot wait to get my hands on this and make up my own mind!
I wondered what the fall-out of the whole Superjimenez bad review debacle. I really hope we don’t have crippling reviews with the objective of getting comments like this onto your site! If the album is as bad as you think why give it space on your site? Why listen to it for more than 2 minutes? Why you didn’t flog the promo copy to freebird!
Well, first off it’s not my site. Secondly I’ll always listen to the whole album, even if the first two or three tracks are bad I’ll give the entire thing a chance. But anyway I’ve been getting a good laugh today thanks to these comments so for that thanks!
If you like Julie Feeney, than great. Listen to the album – enjoy it and don’t give a shite what I think. If you don’t know of her, check her out. Don’t take my review as gospel, make up your own mind. If you disagree with me then fan-fucking-tastic, just don’t get all shit pissed about it.
The laugh is truly on you. Your use of swear words in your response is unprofessional and unnecessary.
He didn’t like the album. Case closed. To suggest not publishing a review of an album on a music site because one reviewer didn’t like it is a bit daft isn’t it? They can’t all be fawning 9/10s can they?
- “Pages is a rather dull and attention fleeting affair”
- “Feeney fails to incite any constructive artistry in the album”
- “Pages could be considered listenable but that’s not even a vaguely decent enough reason to care”,
The reviewer seems to have written this in English, fed the article into Babelfish’s English-to-Korean translator, then fed the result into the Korean-to-English translator before posting it to the internet. As such, we can’t be 100% certain that this is a negative review.
that’ s 매우 지독한 재미있은 의 멋쟁이 !
John John,the “grey goose” has gone…to your head apparently! And then to add insult to enquiry you got all slumdogishly high and mighty in your defense of the realm ..maybe it’s time you owned up.. You’re a closet Julie Feeney fan(ain’t we all?) and have been stalking her since her Crawdaddy daze and wanted her babies for years but the love’s unrequited and this is just your default defense mechanism kicking in?
Or maybe I’m talking horsttith!
Ha..
And while I realise opinions are like our anal orifaces-we all have one!…you really should have shot from your hip here… but not any lower….
I have to say I totally and entirely disagree with your wet fish critique of “pages” By Julie Feeney…Where’s the lurve John ..where’s the lurve?
Wake up and smell the napalm John..The lady’s a class act.The album is awe inspiring and not in a John Wayne awe way either… it’s beautifully written, sung, scored, produced and presented(jees, maybe I should be stalking her now?)..It’ll probably be THE album of the year in Ireland(don’t take my word….but..so sayeth the Irish Times ye gads!)
Should have gone to Specsavas John..and learn to love the bomb that is your own criticism blowing up in your own face..
And that was a crass childish jibe about your stalking habits..sorry!
Well I think it’s ridiculous that people are blowing such a hoo-haa over what would at least appear to be a legitimate and fair review, which culminated with the reviewer not liking the album. T’would appear that many of the respondents are too arrogant to accept an alternative opinion offered to their own. I’ve listened to the album (not all admittedly), the music isn’t very varied and because of this it doesn’t inspire very much, certainly in my way way of thinking. One can state how great they think the artist in question is but that doesn’t make them definitive in terms of quality, nor does it mean that the opinion is one hundred percent shared. The reviewer didn’t like it, that doesn’t mean someone else can’t enjoy it. Also the concept of not posting the review because it scored low is preposterous. It’s is also elitist and false. I wouldn’t ask anyone to give a bogus opinion just to appeal to labels or overly eager fans. So there you go, the reviewer didn’t like it, big deal, neither did I, but at least I don’t have a problem with your difference in opinion on the sound of the album, which can’t be said about a lot of people commenting here in relation to the reviewer.