Maria Taylor – Overlook

- by Thomas

Four albums into her solo career, Azure Ray’s Maria Taylor still isn’t easy to classify. On “Overlook” she sounds all soft and sweet one minute, a little grittier the next. The songs are mostly folk and roots oriented but there’s room for some fooling around with electronic sounds and a couple of experiments.

The songs themselves are nice enough… easy to listen to, at times a little dreamy. Taylor moved to Alabama a while ago and she lets us know that the nights can be cold there in “Happenstance”, a short but oh so sweet song and “Like It Does” is another slow one that won me over.

But opener “Masterplan” takes too long to lead up to a disappointing climax, “Matador” comes with a solo that sounds like they gave a guitar to a retard and told him (or her – I don’t want to discriminate when it comes to retards) to improvise. And the whole second half of the album is simply too weak to leave much of an impression.

I’m sure Maria Taylor can do a whole lot better and because of that, “Overlook” just isn’t good enough.
Score: 5 out of 10
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