Embrace, it must be said are not everyone's cup of tea. Each new Embrace album is met with adoration by fans and dismissiveness by the UK music press, and I must confess I find it a bit baffling. Too often they are laden with a sub-Oasis tag or considered to be Brit-rock also rans, but it's the fans that know the truth - Embrace are a much, much better band than often given credit for. Embrace's music is not cryptic or high-minded or inaccessible, and in today's art/musical/cultural climate these characteristics are considered as attributes.
However, If You've Never Been's appeal lies in it's heart-rending ballads and pulse-quickening rock, and it connects almost immediately. In this respect, Embrace's music is not at all unlike Coldplay's easy charm and melodicism. Take the opening song 'Over', it's a tremendously moving tune that begins with a simple, catchy, circular riff that slowly builds to a rapturous crescendo combining strings, guitars and Danny McNamara's soaring, aching vocals - truly visceral, spine tingling stuff. 'Hey What You Trying to Say' is of a similar mould - great hook, great chorus, nothing complicated but strongly felt. 'Many Will Learn' is perhaps the dark-horse in the pack, it isn't one of Embrace's more crowd pleasing or anthemic songs yet it has a subtle, unassuming beauty and poignancy to it.
To the uninitiated, If You've Never Been is a perfectly good place to start, and for existing fans, - with the likes of the warm and familiar single 'Wonder', there should be plenty here to, er, embrace.
I love this band. They have such a musically smooth sound and the lead singer's voice is amazing. It lulls me into reading, thinking and at night into sleep. I've since bought all their CD's and since they are disbanded, Amazon was a great choice for me. Enjoy!
Embrace seem to have decided during the course of their first two albums that grandiose slow anthems seem to be what they do best.I would agree that these have probably been their better songs-but to fill practically a whole album with almost identical songs is to be honest on the verge of becoming boring.The songs on this album when taken individually are really good-it's just that over the course of a whole album they become barely distinguishable from each other.Each song is slow tempo ballad(there are a few exceptions),each song is filled with heartbreak,each song is very heavily produced,each song has major grand style musical arrangements-big band sound,full orchestra,quiet verse-big soaring chorus,etc.On the plus side Danny McNamara sounds better then he's ever done before.Many of the chorus' are really catchy and as I said if taken individually there are plenty of really good songs on the album.The arrangements are very polished,very ambitious and they come across as a band very skilled in the studio.Some of the vocal harmonies are really glorious especially on songs like 'I Hope You're Happy Now'.On the songs when they keep the arrangements simple-like 'Many Will Learn' it works really well and comes as a refreshing change to the other sonic bombardments.The closing track is also a magnificent 6 minute plus epic of sheer beauty,which builds slowly and very beautifully to a wonderful crescnedo.Of the two faster-well you'd have to say medium paced numbers song 5,'It's Gonna Take Time' is the better.It sounds quite like "You're Not Alone" from their previous album-great brass section in the chorus.On the negative side some of the lyrics are to be frank very cheesy and syruppy-nowhere is this worse then on track 9.Some of the soppiest lyrics I've ever heard to an otherwise good song.All in all this is way better then their last album-the consistency is quite remarkable.It isn't as good as the first one though.The songs are good,it's just that the band have become far to formulaic-there are no suprises on this c.d. for fans of Embrace.
