Sunday, February 12, 2006

Steve Gilmore Reviews: Cameron Pierce - More Than That


Artist: Cameron Pierce
Title: More Than That

Way back in November 2003 I reviewed a track called The Road Is Long by a Canadian artist called Latmat, and it made such an impression on me with its Beatle-ish harmonies and instrumentation that it made latmat a name for me to remember. Over the years since, I've consumed several other goodies from this artist, all of the same high quality pop rock. He has featured in evry single one of my Stevie year end awards ever since that time both as Latmat and under his real name Cameron Pierce which he finally adopted last year. I'm sure he is now also breathing a sigh of relief that I managed - after all this time - to finally spell his name right but in my defence I have to say I've always had a problem with the right use of i's and e's in sentences (or in this case apparently, real names too).

The reason for this liking of his music really has to be down to my own love of vocal harmony work a la the Beatles, which Cameron - along with some other Soundclick artists - have made a staple of their own music. It's also down to Cameron being IMHO an excellent songwriter and arranger because the amount of quality songs this man has put out is pure gold. I think at this point in time, almost everything Cameron has released has found its way onto my hard drive and that stickiness is down to his songwriting ability more than any other element of his work. When I first heard More Than That I must admit to a feeling of disappointment and initially I thought that was down to the track being new to me.

However, the more I played it, the more confirmed I became in my opinion that this isn't anything like as strong as some of his previous tracks. It even has an album filler feel about it in its production too, which I must admit is a big surprise because I've always liked what he does technically. To make sure I was right about this, I have played this a lot more than any other track from this artist as part of the review process, and unfortunately I cannot reach any other conclusion. To be sure if you've never heard Cameron's work you may well get interested enough from this track to check out some of his other works, and I strongly suggest you do because he is everything I have made him out to be. We all go through not-so-hot phases, and I have to presume this is one of Cameron's. There again, it's his own fault really for coming up with such killer tracks in the past.

Yeah, that sounds right. Let's all blame Cameron :D

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Steve, I felt likewise about this particular track, I feel that more time can be spent on the production as well. Cameron has come a long way overall and he does have some gems in his catalog, this one is just a bit under par.

Anonymous said...

Hey Steve,

Cam is one of the reasons I miss reviewing. This kid can write a song and while I agree with you that this track is a little homgenized in its production, I think the song itself is pure Cameron. Not bad from an Albertan. ;)