Ready to take a bumpy ride into cliche-ville with a blond-haired preacher's kid from Kentucky?

Yeah, me neither. But reviews must be written. So bear with me here while I try to keep this one concise - I've been so bored to tears with the debut record from Josh Bates that it's been hard to muster up the interest in writing anything about it. The basic story is that he's a young, hopeful singer/songwriter who learned the guitar, piano, and mandolin at a very young age, who has worked with Mark Miller (better known as the frontman for country group Sawyer Brown and the producer for popular Christian group Casting Crowns) for several years in order to get out a debut album of ten songs that barely struggle past the level of Sunday school lyricism and a basic everyman CCM pop style. Maybe there are occasional injections of electrified rock music, but it's all rather sterilized for a conservative middle-aged audience far beyond Bates' age. Most disappointing is the fact that Bates' instrumental knowledge and his musical influences didn't lead to something better. I'll quote his bio:

"As he learned guitar, manolin, and piano, Josh also took up songwriting, first on family vacations, borrowing from his father's witticisms, then later in more serious efforts, he wrote about faith, often inspired by worship, His influences include Michael W. Smith, BeBe & CeCe Winans, the Isaacs Family, Allison Krauss and Union Station, Earl Scruggs, Billy Monroe and Ricky Skaggs."

Now, I don't recognize all of those names, but I know that at least a few of them are country/bluegrass-type artists. You'd think that influence would show through and make Josh Bates sound a little different than most of his CCM peers, rather than him just blending into the pop/rock landscape. Strangely, the Christian music sector of Nashville seems to be afraid to sound too "country", so any hint of folk influence on Perfect Day is vastly overshadowed by the slick pop production. There just isn't anything different, refreshing, or imaginative about this record. It's there to market to people who want to hear nothing but "blue-sky encouragement" (again, quoting the guy's bio) from a golden-voiced pretty face. Sorry, but that's not nearly enough to sell me on an artist. It destines Josh to a likely short shelf-life of a few hit singles, a sophomore record that tanks because no one can tell him apart from anyone else, and relative obscurity thereafter.

Perfect Day
I do have to say that the album has a promising start - it's definitely an adult contemporary rock track, but the electric guitar sound has some degree of punch to it, like a good mid-tempo Third Day track. Josh's voice is warm and welcoming on first listen - kind of a blend between the slicker styles of Avalon's Greg Long and more of a bright-eyed country boy such as fellow Kentucky native Steven Curtis Chapman. Bates can't hold a candle to Chapman in the songwriting department (though, to be fair, Chapman has been slipping a bit lately), but I'm sure it's the way he evokes a familiar influence while singing a song about the End Times that makes this song a popular one, and a wise marketing choice for a first single. For a fully unoffensive song about the return of Christ and the glory of Heaven, I guess one could do worse. Bates (or rather, songwriter John Cox) has a catchy melody and a memorable refrain of "You alone are holy" to end off this song, a fair amount of rhythmic punch, some nicely layered background vocals, and enough charm in this recording to make the abundant cliches easy to overlook. Enjoy it for what it is - it's the last time on this record that he'll be so successful.

Less
Oh, boy. A dull ballad already? Josh is wasting no time endearing himself to AC radio with this track, which certainly seems to strive for less than average. There's a hint of a good song idea here, as Josh sweetly croons about a God who loves him when he feels like he doesn't measure up, but the wording is very vague and superficial, making it tough to connect on a personal level. The music and melody are dull, a total wimp-out after the first track, and while there's some mandolin plucking going on in the background of the second verse, it's way overshadowed by the production, and it wouldn't be a terribly compelling bit of musicianship even if it were pushed upfront anyway. By this point, you've got a good idea of how Bates' bluegrass influences will play out on the rest of the record - that is to say, hardly at all.

King of Glory
The rhythm and celebratory electric guitar playing of this worship song remind me quite a bit of Chris Tomlin's "Famous One", though obviously this one isn't as good. It has a good, floating melody, and I like the way Josh delivers the words, flowing well with the circular rhythm. The instrumental backing doesn't quite have the teeth to make this one pass as a powerful song - and the chorus is extremely awkward, mainly an exercise in Magnetic Poetry: Praise & Worship Edition, as Bates pulls togther as many standard praise song catch phrases tied together with random "hellalujah"s. The key change as the verse leads into the chorus is kind of cool, keeping the song from getting too monotonous, but the bad writing keeps it from really giving the listener a good payoff.

Shine
Enough with songs called "Shine" already! Seriously, I think virtually every major CCM artist has written a song with this title at one point or another, and other than the once-witty Newsboys, they've almost never been memorable. Josh's version is a generic lyric about "this little light of mine", which opens up into the usual stuff about light overpowering shadows and stars in the sky, etc. It starts off acoustic and turns into another rock chorus, though not a particularly powerful one (the moment where the guitar breaks in on a lot of these songs is an interesting moment, but the follow-up is usually a big letdown as the guitar playing is rather monotonous). The biggest positive element here is the song's melody and the evocative background vocals, and really those aren't that fascinating, but on an album like this, I strain to hear elements that I can say quasi-nice things about.

Never Give Up
Here we have another classic adult contemporary music trick being displayed - slow ballad in 3/4 time, some acoustic elements peeking through the pop glaze like morning sunlight, a dash of cello or some other lone stringed instrument, and tons of predictable melodic tricks such as the ascending bridge which builds to the big finish. If this sounds familiar, it's because you're heard a derivative of it on a Jeremy Camp record, and like almost every Jeremy Camp song, this one tries its best to get you all emotional and teary-eyed without saying anything too specific. Josh plays the role of the prodigal son here, someone who has forgotten God and is discovering that God still won't give up on him. I can relate to the problem, as I think any serious Christian can, because we all have those days we think we've let God down. I appreciate Christians who try to write about that. But as usual, Josh hasn't added any interesting perspective to the subject, so the song fades into the distance as another pretty but immaterial entry in a long line of songs vying for the top spot on inspirational radio stations.

There Is None Like You
Here's a praise song with a comparatively more rocking riff (I'd still much rather hear the folk influence than the rock influence, but I'll take what I can get, because I'm really grasping at straws for something to hold my attention here). It's held back a bit by a rhythm that never really allows it to get off the ground, and of course another set of cobbled-together worship cliches, chief among them being the chorus, which states "There is no like You". Every phrase from this song is one that I think I heard at some point as part of some simplistic memory verse-type song in Sunday school, and while God's truth is unchanging, that doesn't mean our personal expression of it should be so static and lifeless. Again, background vocals and the presence of electric guitar stand out as the only semi-interesting elements of an otherwise dull song.

Walking Through the Fire
What is possibly the album's most upbeat song is also its most horrendously cliché (which is really saying a lot, given that Josh has been batting 0 in the insight department thus far). I'm sorry, but anyone who expects that a perky, major-key chorus proclaiming, "It's a matter of faith, hope, and love, a matter of trusting our Father above" needs to be hauled off to the Funny Farm. This one follows the CCM template of vaguely mentioning your "dark and troubled" times and trying to wash them all away with a sad attempt at danceable fun and a bunch of sentiments found in your typical Hallmark card. Sorry, pal, that doesn't encourage me through my trials, it just arrogantly treats them like they're no big deal. This is the kind of stuff that might encourage a middle-aged soccer mom who is disappointed that she didn't get a good parking spot at Wednesday evening service, but definitely not the same mom who lost her child to a devastating hurricane or something like that. Not that every song has to be that deep and meaty and emotional, but... come on, dude, you're not even trying with this one.

You Say Come
Hey, there's that mandolin again! Listen carefully and you'll hear it strumming along with the guitar in the background - a fun, folksy sound if you happen to enjoy the instrument, but again, nothing indicative of the prodigy that Bates supposedly was on the instrument. Here's it's just thrown in to serve another bland pop tune - perhaps the moment where the album sinks to its all-time low point. More half-hearted guitar lazily punctuate the chorus, just hitting a note and letting it buzz for a few seconds before the next predictable chord change. Some of the most didactic and unimaginative lyrics on the record - "If only I would listen learn, and take the time to read my Bible" standing out as the most frustrating example in a song that sounds like it was written by a third-grader. And I can't even say that I enjoy the background vocals this time, like I usually do - here's they're just anemic and cheesy.

Alive
OK, now I'm halfway interested. The syncopated percussion, piano intro, and a more ominous melody take a turn for the better into more of an "alternative worship" category, and if even the beat flattens out into something normal, I'm at least willing to give Bates one last shot at a solid. But - it never fails - he brings it all to a screeching halt with an idiotically repetitive chorus of "I'm comin' alive... alive... I'm comin' alive... alive." He may sing the words amidst rocking guitars like his life dependent on it, but the song is about as inane as the new Rebecca St. James single that shares its name. It finally comes to an end on a random, weird chord, which would have been cool, had it been an edgier and more believable rock song. Just peppering a song with loud electric guitars does not make your record an solid, youth-friendly one.

Prodigal
Funny, track 10 on Casting Crowns' latest was called "Prodigal" (and it was an uncharacteristically good song, too) - Bates' label seems to have a thing for the repetition of ideas. Take into account that Bates already explored this theme on Track 5, and you can see why his album's closing track is a real snoozer. It starts with some fluffy keyboards that sound like they drifted in straight out of Care Bears Land or something, and as a whole, it's flat and dry despite its best attempts to be pretty and jerk heartstrings. I can see really vague glimpses of honest, emotional, non-cliché storytelling in phrases like "Captain of my ship of fools" and "All I have left is 'Daddy, please'", but those would be below average attempts at cleverness from more seasoned Christian songwriters, so I'm not saying it's anything hugely laudable here. Josh makes the mistake of assuming his audience entirely understands the religious cliches inherent in a word like "prodigal" - the word denotes a powerful story in the Bible, but this guy doesn't really have the control of language to really make the story stand out. As a result, we have one more unnecessary fluff to track to conclude an album chock full of 'em.

And that's all the effort I'm going to spend on this non-country, non-bluegrass, non-insightful, non-essential, non-anything interesting album, because honestly, you and I have better things to go listen to.

You know, like Carman.

ALBUM WORTH:
Perfect Day $1
Less -$.50
King of Glory $.50
Shine $0
Never Give Up on Me $.50
There Is None Like You $0
Walking Through the Fire -$1
You Say Come -$1
Alive $.50
Prodigal $0
TOTAL: $0

Website: http://www.joshbatesmusic.com

Recommended: No