If You've Never Been

by

Embrace

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I feel that Drawn From Memory was easily the best album of 2000, and also an all time favorite. The fact that this album is even better should mean that Embrace are destined to become a household name around the world, mentioned in the same breathe as U2 or the Beatles. Sadly, as least currently, the music world appears to be in some strange state where real quality is not valued, or at least doesn't sell very well. The excellent in every way first single "Wonder" only went to #14 in the UK charts, and the band doesn't currently even have a record deal in the U.S. Ok, enough ranting - why is this album good? Simply because it contains 10 great songs which are each uniquely enjoyable on their own and taken together provide a wonderful and cohesive listening experience for three quarters of an hour. Along the way you'll be reminded again and again of the simple beauty of life, love, and even heartache. What more can one ask for from a music cd? Getting more specific about the tracks, the second single "Make It Last" is, like "Wonder", another classic Embrace anthem complete with beautiful soft building verse and soaring chorus. The sort of title track, "If You've Never Been In Love With Anything", is an uplifting, upbeat surprise that even contains some Beach Boys-like harmonies. "Happiness Will Get You In The End" with its soft piano reminds me of "Liar's Tears", in both musical and lyrical tone. "Satellites" provides a beatiful ending to the album. The other five tracks are each very good as well. I love this album, and it makes one feel that it loves you back.

Embrace seem to have decided during the course of their first two albums that grandiose slow anthems seem to be what they do best.I would agree that these have probably been their better songs-but to fill practically a whole album with almost identical songs is to be honest on the verge of becoming boring.The songs on this album when taken individually are really good-it's just that over the course of a whole album they become barely distinguishable from each other.Each song is slow tempo ballad(there are a few exceptions),each song is filled with heartbreak,each song is very heavily produced,each song has major grand style musical arrangements-big band sound,full orchestra,quiet verse-big soaring chorus,etc.On the plus side Danny McNamara sounds better then he's ever done before.Many of the chorus' are really catchy and as I said if taken individually there are plenty of really good songs on the album.The arrangements are very polished,very ambitious and they come across as a band very skilled in the studio.Some of the vocal harmonies are really glorious especially on songs like 'I Hope You're Happy Now'.On the songs when they keep the arrangements simple-like 'Many Will Learn' it works really well and comes as a refreshing change to the other sonic bombardments.The closing track is also a magnificent 6 minute plus epic of sheer beauty,which builds slowly and very beautifully to a wonderful crescnedo.Of the two faster-well you'd have to say medium paced numbers song 5,'It's Gonna Take Time' is the better.It sounds quite like "You're Not Alone" from their previous album-great brass section in the chorus.On the negative side some of the lyrics are to be frank very cheesy and syruppy-nowhere is this worse then on track 9.Some of the soppiest lyrics I've ever heard to an otherwise good song.All in all this is way better then their last album-the consistency is quite remarkable.It isn't as good as the first one though.The songs are good,it's just that the band have become far to formulaic-there are no suprises on this c.d. for fans of Embrace.