Rooney Tunes - Island Paradise

Hear The Track Here

Micheal Rooney (aka Rooney Tunes) impressed the beejeebers out of me when I reviewed Sally (August 2006), a rock/pop/jazz track whose production was absolutely spot on, gaining him a Highly Recommended first time out. Stands to reason then that I would be up for another bite out of this artist and - lo and behold - he's going to let me. Some folks just never learn, do they? Going by the list of people lining up to leave this guy comments, he has made an incredible impact on Soundclick already, and rightly so if the quality and breadth of work that Sally entailed is a standard feature. I tend to think so because one of this guy's older friends is young Jim Miller (of Jim-n-Lisa fame) so it's a given that Michael is likely to be as professional as the man himself.

Island Paradise is about (and I quote because I couldn't have made this one up) 'an imaginiary scenario in which a person wakes in the night sleeping with his lover. They live on an island and have a deep love'. MmmmmOK, sounds like a soap dunnit? Here I am thinking I must be the eternal romantic but then along comes Mr Rooney who has a SERIOUSLY bad case of lurrrvesickness. So it's a good job that it's RT who does the musical honours because in the hands of a lesser musician this would all be so sick-inducing, I'd have to hire a vomitorium for a couple of days. I've written reams about my dislike for fluffy bunny, sickly sweet ballads so I won't bang on that drum right here. Island Paradise, then, is a ballad full of the kinds of sentiments that - outside of America - makes most people shudder. Still, give the Americans their due, they wear their hearts on their sleeves for all to see.

The rest of us keep schtum and lech shamelessly...

As I said, in the hands of a lesser musician I would be pounding this track into the ground right now and although I dislike the genre intensely there is no denying the work that is here. It's essentially a fairly wordy peice so I'm a little puzzled about why there are no lyrics online, especially given that it is important to understand what the song is about. Musically, of course, it's about as perfect as it's ever going to get and is another indication of the class of musician Micheal Rooney is - whatever you might feel about his choice of material. The plain, awful truth is that I really don't like material of this kind but - if I had to listen to it - then certainly Rooney Tunes would be one of my first choices. As a performer, Michael is commanding and confident, surprisingly for such a light, ephemeral track but his skills as an arranger and producer fairly take my breath away - a trait he shares with Jim Miller btw. At this stage of the game, I live in hope that Rooney Tunes is going to come up with a tune I would feel more comfortable reviewing in order to really do this artist some justice. Even though I really don't like this track, I love everything going on in it - if you can understand that.

Absolutely top class pop Ballad.