(Glassnote/Liberator)

Friend of The Fray offers up third album

Secondhand Serenade is the musical project of singer-songwriter John Vesely, and fans may have had the opportunity to catch him live in Australia when he was here supporting The Fray in 2009. A singer-songwriter is what Vesely technically is, but the term is a little bit misleading in this case, as Vesely doesn’t sound like traditional singer-songwriters a la Josh Pyke or Bob Evans at all. His cloth is cut from the same factory-faded tight denim as bands such as the aforementioned Fray, and other hard pop-rock bands like Fall Out Boy or All American Rejects. Secondhand Serenade is a fitting but unfortunate name, as it inadvertently does a pretty good job of summing up what’s going on here. Truth is, while Vesely is undoubtedly a talented musician and singer, this album offers nothing new or interesting to the genre at all. Sure, the songs may be an honest expression of the writer’s emotional trauma (as the PR claims), but underneath the super-slick production and multi-tracked vocals it comes across as a lot of misplaced teenage angst (note: he’s not a teenager), perhaps caused by his parents not giving him the keys to the BMW for the weekend. As a result, while this album may give solace to all the middle and upper class white teenagers who think their life is unfair, one is generally left a bit nonplussed, like maybe we’ve heard it all before.

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CHRIS PICKERING

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