Alexz Johnson Island

Reviews have been turning up all over. This review looks at each track and reviews them before review the album as a whole. View it on their site here.

Get Voodoo-ed

In a time where new music is in the fast lane, we’d like to take time and sit down and discuss a new upcoming artist you’ve probably never heard of (or maybe you have if you were a 90s Disney Channel kid) or maybe you’re Canadian, the origin of our artist to look out for, Alexz Johnson. Her debut album “Voodoo” came out those month and we here at the blog have posted about her a few times before. But now that the albums released, we can discuss what a gem this record really is. For those of you who don’t know Alexz Johnson, she’s a 23 year old singer/songwriter who hails from Vancouver Canada and made her first real debut on the 90s Disney series “So Weird” as well as making a comeback in 2005 with MTV’s The-N series “Instant Star”. You can also catch her in a few Lifetime movies of the week. Although she has a pretty full resume, her music discography is pretty empty…until now that is.

The record opens up with the soft beat of the title track, “Voodoo“, which is probably the best track off the entire album. It sings about being under the control of love in beautiful artistic lyrics and melodies you couldn’t think of off the bat.

The second track “Gonna Get it” drops your expectations of the album and is one of the weaker songs off the album, but Johnson’s vocals still stand out no matter the song and it makes the entire CD worth listening to.

“Look at Those Eyes” is a beautiful ballad running at 5 minutes long (the longest off the album) and samples a showtune sounding melody and amazing vocals that keeps you glued to the song for the entire length.

“L.A. Made Me” is a song about, well L.A., and if you’ve ever been, you will know exactly what the song sings about. The song is about how the city can steel your soul and spit it out alive and wrangled with an amazing chorus and the line “L.A. owns my soul” shows the amazing lyric talent of Johnson.

“A Little Bit” is probably the most pop sounding track off the record with a catchy beat and a catchy melody. It’s probably the one song you could hear on the radio if they played her music on mainstream radio stations.

“Mr. Jones” displays a song about suspicion and displayed it through it’s extremely taunting melody. And yes, the word “piranha” is used constantly throughout the song.

“Superstition” sounds like it samples the backtracking of the Temper Trap’s “Sweet Disposition”. This tracks highlights are “tell her you love her”‘s melody which made the song take a dramatic turn for the better.

“Trip Around the World” is the albums lead single. The song displays how beautiful life can actually be through it’s beautiful melody. Listening to this song you can actually picture yourself traveling around the world because after all, the planet Earth is ours. We’re basically “on a big balloon floating through space”.

“Hurricane Girl” possibly has the best lyric of the album “people talkin’ like they don’t even know where they’re walking” and has the soft sounds much like “Voodoo” and “Look at Those Eyes”.

“Taker” is our favorite off the record and has your basic acoustic guitar with Alexz’s beautiful vocals mixed in with yep, violins. The tracks melody sings to you so beautifully and just shows that Johnson can really pull anything off. The song sings about being this unforgiving person who turns out to be her giving the track a sort of 3D effect that get’s you going “Oh!” as you listen.

The record ends with “Boogie Love“, which quite frankly the album could do without. It’s flat with no purpose on the album and is completely misplaced and is a bad way to end such an amazing record. This track doesn’t do well with Johnson’s vocals either. This song should have been a B-Side to a single.

But with that said, “Voodoo” is definitely a must buy and will definitely whet your appetite if you’re looking for some new music, especially some new SOUNDING music altogether as Johnson’s tracklisting on this CD is something you usually don’t hear too much these days. [Album Grade: A-]

The album is available only in Canada in hard copy but you can find the CD available to download on your countries iTunes music store.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 15th, 2010 at 8:08 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.