I am a huge ToaDM fan. It has taken me a few weeks to write this review, because I’m having some cognitive dissonance. A band I really like, whose first single off this new record (Rx) has been playing nonstop on Octane for months, finally releases their new album… and I hate it. I’m generally okay with a band moving along, growing up, creating some new sounds. That isn’t the problem with this album.

It’s terminally overproduced.

I can hear the band and their songwriting, buried under the layers of smoothing, but just barely. Most of the songs on this album bring to mind soft-focus people in white, dancing in a summer field. Which is not really what I am looking for from this band.

I actually had to go back through their catalogue, to see if I had missed some shift in their production style. The Truth Is… (2011) is more produced than most of their material, until now, but it still has an edge.  So, no.

I went and looked up their producer. This is what Wikipedia has to say:

He produced several of Sexsmith’s albums during the 2000s and has gone on to write and produce songs and albums by KT Tunstall, a-ha, Jason Mraz, James Morrison, Martha Wainwright, Train, Cat Stevens, Mary J. Blige, Jamie Cullum, Alyssa Bernal, Beverley Knight and Westlife. Terefe’s productions won two awards at the 2010 Grammy Awards as a producer, for “Make It Mine” by Jason Mraz (Best Male Pop Vocal Performance) and “Lucky” by Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat (Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals).

So, um… yeah.

A couple of the songs are entertaining, and there’s a fabulous cover of Chris Issak’s Wicked Game on there. If I listen closely, I can hear the songwriting. They’ve definitely grown up some. That’s all fine. But this album has no edge, no grit. I don’t need it to sound like they recorded it in their garage or anything, and the gods know some metal and hard rock has a crazy amount of production on it, but this album has no mojo.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I haz a sad.