Friday 6 March 2015

Austria 2015 - Johann Sebastian Bass – Absolutio

(Click here for a Restoration funk up...)

Tonight's third Austrian show was a thoroughly complicated affair. The crux of the show saw them take the six acts to a castle and team them up with some high profile songwriters who'd never heard ot the acts before and got them to write a pair of songs together. Then said acts performed both songs, and the judges picked out their favourite on of each pair at the end.

Simple enough, you might think. But then again, when you have an act like JSB here who were almost certainly selected for their half-decent back catalogue, why would you muddy the mix by bringing in some random who knew nothing of the band and their ethos - now matter how long their impressive list of songwriting awards may be? It all seems terribly strange and unwieldy.

In the end it didn't turn out too bad for them though, and the slightly better song of the two was selected. But there was still something that didn't quite gel for me. It's all a bit too 'look at me, I'm whacky" rather than being genuinely unhinged, and it all felt a bit forced. Even a rare appearance for a Peter Frampton-style Talk Box (that air-blown pipey thing he was chewing on), didn't entirely rescue it - but having sad all that, I'm still kinda glad it's there, as it would make a welcome addition to all the slow-to-mid tempo stuff selected already. 

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