Mandy Moore – Amanda Leigh
Artist: Mandy Moore
Album: Amanda Leigh
Release Date: May 26, 2009
1. Merrimack River
“Merrimack River” is a soothing song in triple time with beautiful harmonies. Like in the previous album, her singing is pretty spot on and flows very well with this track. Her performance is pretty musical from start to finish, and the tone of the song has a very river-like feel to it. I feel a bit like I’m flowing down a calm river on a raft or something. The male vocal harmonies are an excellent addiction to the track as they’re excellent all the way through. It’s a dreamy little track that opens up this album quite well, although is a bit lengthy for its musical content as most of it repeats itself a lot. The vocalists do a good job to keep the song interesting musically, though.
2. Fern Dell
Following “Merrimack River”, “Fern Dell” continues the lighter accompaniment as most of the accompaniment here is a rather catchy guitar line (kind of country-sounding), a soft percussion beat and piano chords. As I said before, I love the guitar line that she uses to accompany this particular song; it’s rather addictive. I’m not too fond of how she does some of her vocal lines, most of it because she reverts to her super airy voice at parts of the song, and her personality just doesn’t come out a lot in her vocals on this track. The energy is lost in this song and her singing sounds a hollow. I enjoy the little burst of instrumentation near the end of the song, but otherwise, the song is a bit of a bore vocally.
3. I Could Break Your Heart Any Day of the Week
The next track is the leading single from the album, and some of the shorter songs off the album. It took awhile for the melody to grow on me, and I still find the chorus kind of a mediocre and doesn’t really work together well with the verses. The melodic progressions are a bit weird. In any case, Moore gets a lot more energy into this song and sounds more interesting on this track. I liked the previous song better in terms of the composition, but this song is performed in a more interesting manner. The composition is a bit mediocre, albeit a bit catchy as well.
4. Pocket Philosopher
We’re back with the smoother, mid-tempo stuff. This opens with an active piano chord accompaniment. Moore’s singing is a bit broadway-esque as she starts to pronounce everything a bit too much for a pop-folk song with some of the words. It’s not too much of a bad thing, though; it’s just rather noticeable. I’m not too fond of the melody of this song, though. It doesn’t flow very well, especially with some of the accompaniment at short times where it clashes with the sound. The melody is kind of cute at times, and I like the soothing sound of the track. However, that’s about all I like about this track. It’s nice, but I don’t like much about the track.
5. Song About Home
The opening is quite interesting with the low guitar lines, the choir singing and the flute. The flute parts could use some work, honestly. They sound a bit sharp and are definitely not in tune with each other. This is apparently the only part that doesn’t quite work that well on this track, because I love the melody of this song. It’s soothing, and Moore’s singing seems a lot more sincere on this track. She shows off her rather pretty tone on this track quite well and has a nice control of the musicality of her voice on this track. I must say that the flute repeating over and over again with the same pitch errors is really annoying.
6. Everblue
“Everblue” is a much more clearly produced track and continues with the soothing sound. The accompaniment drones on a bit, but it helps focus a bit more on Moore’s singing. The melody is clear and Moore sings well despite the kind of dragging feeling the accompaniment and the melody line gives off. Somehow, this is one of the better songs so far off the album despite being a bit on the boring side. Moore still sings this quite well, although the track itself kind of induces sleep after awhile, especially since it’s one of four songs that are over 4 minutes in length.
7. Merrimack River (Reprise)
We’re back to the opening track with a small little instrumental version of the main melody of the song. It’s kind of the same soothing, melodic chorus with a lot of strange dissonant sounds twirling around it. It kind of reminds me of a circus, but now it’s floating on the crazy river. A floating circus? :D
8. Love to Love Me Back
Yay, something more midtempo. It’s a cute little folky song with the standard acoustic guitar with a hint of county sound to the overall sound. Moore sings in a light, airy tone in the verse, but this time around, it works quite well as it highlights her really pretty head tone in the higher tones. She brings in her chest voice in the chorus a bit at points. This is probably the first song I’ve fully liked since “Merrimack River”. It’s a really pretty song from the accompaniment to Moore’s singing throughout the track. The track is very soothing and melodic.
9. Indian Summer
The bass and the piano at the beginning are quite interesting. The bass just kind of play little quick sequences under the soaring piano opening. This ends up to be another mid-tempo piece that has some pretty instrumentation. Small parts of the melody clash a bit with what the piano plays in term of the progressions, but overall this is a rather pretty piece, but the melody doesn’t flow as well as I would have liked. Moore still sings well throughout this short song, and the instrumentation for this song is actually quite good and layered. Pretty.
10. Nothing Everything
Chords open up this next upbeat track, and I like how light Moore’s singing is when she starts off the track. She still sings with a lot of style and energy and makes this song interesting vocally, although the low notes could use a bit more energy at some of the end of her phrases. It’s a cute track and feels a bit weird after the short “Indian Summer” as it’s one of the longer tracks off the album. It’s still a gentle, upbeat track that has a pretty melody. I love the little vocal things happening on the bridge; they’re quite amusing with all the layerings of them saying different things in different rhythms.
11. Bug
The final track is a soft acoustic guitar midtempo track. I have a love for these kind of simple acoustic guitar tracks, and Moore does this track really quite well. It’s the shortest track off the album by only a few seconds, and it ends the album perfectly. Moore’s tone is beautiful as always, and the violin bridge is quite nice. The added vocals things in the latter half of the song I find really distracting though. Her low notes need a little work as they lack a bit of support and kind of falter off a little, but otherwise, this a pretty, simple track to end off the album.
Overall –
Favourite Track: Merrimack River
Mandy Moore’s latest effort isn’t bad, but I don’t find it very compelling most of the time. There are plenty of nice songs throughout the album, but I’m not fond of some of the arrangements of composition throughout the album. Some melodies don’t flow as well as they could have on the album, and really distracted me from enjoying a few songs as much as I could have. In addition, a lot of the songs don’t really tend to stand out very much or were cluttered with bad musical choices. While I enjoy some of the stylistic choices throughout this album, the results seem a bit less polished than her previous record, and quite frankly I didn’t enjoy as many songs this time around. Moore is still a solid singer, but this record is a little too average and lacking a bit of personality at times.
Mandy Moore | Megumi | August 1, 2009
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