Wednesday 14 December 2011

Jai McDowall // Believe

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Jai McDowall, Britain’s Got Talent 2011 winner releases his debut album, Believe

Opening with the U2 classic With or Without You, you’re instantly given a flavour of the album; choirs, strings, and ballad. Where You Are showcases McDowall’s powerful vocals before heading into Coldplay’s Fix You. The Prayer (probably most famously known as the duet between Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion) is performed with New Zealander Hayley Westenra and is simply beautiful.

Next we have Nickleback’s How You Remind Me, in a piano driven ballad format. Following is Faith Hill’s There You’ll Be. Feels Like Home starts off just a piano, building to include guitar, strings and choir before settling back to it starting sound. Evanscence’s Bring Me To Life is another vocal showcase for McDowall. Next we have a rendition of Green Day’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams which is guitar driven but the vocals sound raw, almost as if it’s been an acoustic recording. Finally we have Elbow’s One Day Like This that buit leaves us thinking that there’s more to come.

It feels as if this album is a safe album; pick safe songs, mainly ballads because of the time of year that the release has been made. Sadly it seems as if this album could have been more, but those in the know haven’t wanted to take any risks. All the songs are well known, and yes, McDowall does sing them well. It just seems that his true talent has been hidden under a bush. If there is another album, hopefully we’ll get a chance to fully see what Jai is capable of.

Rating: 3/5

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