Soulful crooner Daniel Merriweather's debut release, Love & War, was released in June 2009 in his native Australia, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. And after a handful of delays, the album's finally being released in the U.S. on Feb. 23, 2010, which means now Americans will have the chance to find out what music lovers elsewhere around the world have already known for awhile now; Merriweather is a promising young R&B singer who definitely has the vocal talent to be a force to reckon with in the music world in the years to come.
Relationship Drama
As you might expect by it's title, Merriweather's
Love & War album has a main theme of the good and bad of relationships. Interestingly though, instead of rehashing the usual cliches that you find on a lot of American R&B and Soul albums, this album offers a different perspective than we're used to hearing. There's a quite a bit more
war than
love on
Love & War, and the painful parts of being in a relationship are explored here via some very personal, well thought out and meaningful lyrics. Instead of portraying himself as the perfect man in a perfect relationship, he sings a lot about how much love hurts, making him sort of a male version of Mary J. Blige.
Some of the songs on the album are almost drowning in sorrow, one of the best of them being "Water and a Flame," a duet about a pair of lovers with opposite personalities who break up but just a week later can't stand being apart from one another. "Seven days has gone so fast, I really thought the pain would pass, it's been nearly an hour since I thought of you/You're sure not answerin' the phone, I'd settle for a busy tone, At least then I'd know that you're okay, A girl like you ain't meant to go away," Daniel sings. And although Merriweather does a fine job on the song, the best vocals here belong to his partner on the tune, British songbird Adele, who soulfully warbles "I'm tired of this empty house, I need a drink to get me out: so effectively that you'd swear that she's actually suffering from a newly broken heart.
Solid, Well-Sung
The song that most Americans probably know Merriweather from - if they know him at all - is
"Change," a hip-hop influenced jam that features the rapper Wale and was crafted by British super-producer Mark Ronson, the creative genius behind songs by numerous singers from the UK, including Amy Winehouse, Adele, Christina Aguilera and Lily Allen. The addictive jam, which vaguely tackles the topic of making the world a better place ("If nobody's gonna wake up and start askin' who's in charge, ain't nothin' gonna change"), is the album's best song, but ironically one of the least substantive. Other songs here, including the heartbreak anthem "Chainsaw," where he compares being in love to being literally torn to pieces; "Cigarettes," a tale of a lonely man who winds up drinking, gambling, getting into fights and engaging in other self-destructive behavior in order to fill the void in his life; and the upbeat, danceable "Impossible," a lyrically stereotypical ("I would do anything to win your love"), but still thrilling song about chasing a special person.
Overall, the album is filled with solid, well-sung, well-produced tracks. If there's one knock on the album though, it's that Merriweather's Motown-style vocals aren't quite as powerful or compelling as some of the old-school Soulsters he's obviously trying to emulate. But the good news is that since this is only his first album, and since Merriweather's still in his 20s, there should still plenty of room for him to grow into an elite vocalist.
