CD Review of A Watched Pot by Bleu
Bleu: A Watched Pot
Recommended if you like
Semisonic, Jellyfish, Howie Day
Label
Artist Garage
Bleu: A Watched Pot

Reviewed by David Medsker

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N
o one takes pleasure from knocking guys like Bleu. A consummate musician who rubs elbows with alt-pop giants (Andy Sturmer, Dan Wilson, Mike Viola), he’s the kind of guy that should be a superstar, or at the very least shifting enough units and raking in enough publishing money to live comfortably. But alas, he’s not, and even worse, he has no one to blame for this lack of success but himself.

The man – real name William James McAuley III – certainly knows his way around a pop hook and is the proud owner of a booming baritone, but he has a peculiar fondness for the middle of the road. His 2003 major-label debut, Redhead, had songs where Bleu seemed to give himself over to his pop muse, and those songs were awesome. Far too often, though, he seemed to be trying to write a hit, and those songs were less than awesome. Bleu gave the label a follow-up album, titled A Watched Pot, in 2005, but they refused to release it and, soon after, dropped Bleu from their roster. After much wrangling Bleu, in a situation similar to Aimee Mann’s Bachelor Number Two fiasco, finally secured the rights to release the album himself. So here is A Watched Pot, four years later, and as much as it pains us to say it, we understand why the label turned it down. He’s still stuck in the middle of the road.

Mind you, this is a much better set of mid-tempo numbers compared to the ones that cluttered Redhead. "No Such Thing as Love," which features Sturmer singing backing vocals, is prettier than the song title would suggest, and his duet with Sandra McCracken, "When the Lights Go Out," is better than the version McCracken recorded with her husband Derek Webb for their 2008 Ampersand EP. (Which is saying something, because that entire EP is fantastic.) The problem is that there are too damn many of them. In fact, the only time the album kicks into high gear is on the Motown tribute "Kiss Me." One song, out of 11 (twelve, if you count the hidden track after album closer "What Kinda Man Am I?"). Even Elliott Smith made sure his albums had a greater upbeat-to-downbeat ratio than that.

Again, there is nothing particularly wrong with these songs – well, the majority of them, anyway; "Boy Meets Girl" gets way too cute with the rhyming of mismatched rock bands like Twisted Sister and Mr. Mister – but the sheer volume of slowness makes for a ponderous listen. For a singer that reached for the sky with "We’ll Do It All Again" on Redhead, watching him settle in as a crooner is maddening. Bleu clearly showed on the all-star L.E.O. album Alpacas Orgling that he can rock out when the mood strikes him; pity it didn’t strike him more often here.

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