Seeing the quirky and colourful cover for Mama’s Gun’s new album ‘Routes to Riches’ it’s natural to suspect an audio experience guaranteed to be the same. Yet after the flaring potential of ‘Rico’ all that’s left is guaranteed to give you an unwanted ticket to the land of nod. This album has become another instance where the age old adage, don’t judge a book, or CD, by its cover, or sleeve, has been proven true.
The only track that truly stood out was the afore mentioned ‘Rico’. Layered with an upbeat tempo and smothered with unadulterated pop it is certainly a track that will wake you up. This makes it a shame that Mama’s Gun did not think to leave the best for last as an antidote against the rest of their album.
‘Pots of Gold’ is another, partially, memorable track. Although grating at first it is possible to get past the annoyingly unnatural high pitched voice and the somewhat questionable lyrics and actually enjoy it. Yet this blissful state of enlightenment only comes after you’ve listened to the whole album once and are making the rounds again in a desperate attempt to find more good points about it.
To be fair ‘Routes To Riches’ is not entirely disappointing, it shows that Mama’s Gun can cater for a variety of music lovers from pop to soul which their single ‘You Are The Music’, released on September 28th, can vouch for. However, it just seems that the band is not ready to branch out and as such have failed to compensate for their lack of courage.
