Mr Big
... The Stories We Could Tell

Mr Pig… sorry Mr Pig seem to be obsessing with pigs having a pig flying on their previous album and some kind of bear-pig-man on their new album … The Stories We Could Tell. If you connect the dots between the two you could figure it being What If The Stories We Could Tell, but what does that really mean. I think it might have something to do with Man-bear-pig, even the band name alludes to that fact. I guess Al Gore is in the shadows keeping an eye on this band, another one of those band who has the internet reviewers singing high praises. Are they also in on the conspiracy to destroy the world?

Well, you will not really receive any stylistic surprise, unless of course you had been expecting tumultuous evil dark black metal or something like that. It is standardised melodic rock according to the format, had there been a certification of the genre they would have ticked every box. I think the singer is quite good, the production is top notch, the sound is very good and the music is quite catchy. The variation is as expected but no more than that really and the very long playing time nearing the hour will have you looking at the time more than once, possibly even four or five times before it ends. So it is well made according to format and it is long.

Yeah, What If… was an album that was a miracle of indifference, I can’t recall anything of this album now and I actually thought it was another album that was the previous Mr Big album i had reviewed those years ago. That album was better. This album is a little less indifferent I have to say and Mr Pig has something going for them with this album. Like the opening track which is very good after that come nothing, and then nothing, and then more nothing, and even then it is more nothingness. It ends well so if you skip a few tracks in the middle it becomes fairly good and slightly entertaining. But it is that feeling of Man-bear-pig and that feeling of them having stolen everything they do from stuff we have already heard before. They make it flawless but you feel slightly deprived of novelty and freshness, it feels kind of flat.

I would describe it as a fairly good album but nothing that feels fresh, new, exciting or interesting. Just a well made paint-by-numbers album with a good singer and when you are sent a big number of these albums released in a year you get tired of these ordinary things, but yet it is too good to be low rated but too uninteresting to get anything but a middle rating. Fans of the genre might appreciate this, and the excitement of hearing the same stuff over and over again is of course in the eye of the beholder but if you picked up this album and was hoping for something feeling fresh and interesting you will be gravely disappointed.

HHHHHHH