avid Cook Analog Heart

David Cook is already released a solo album titled Analog Heart, and It is Amazing because The album was being #1 downloaded album on Amazon.com, even ahead of Mariah Carey’s new album.

Talking about the album… The album is in the vein of Three Doors Down-esque throat-clearing rock, which is David cook's favorite genre of music. This is earnest and shows some songwriting skill and rock bravado, even when it sounds a bit off-key (flat) 90% of the time.

The opening two songs, “Straight Ahead” and “Don’t Say a Word” are fairly catchy rock tunes, with nice riff throwbacks to mid 90s alt-rock (Verve Pipe, Goo Goo Dolls, etc) and occasional splashes of 80s-era Cure. There are a few mediocre rock ballads, like “The Truth” and “Makeover,” the latter of which contains this charming lyric: “She fell out; her broken legs won’t let her walk away / From this town that couldn’t give a single shit either way.”

The best song on the album is probably “Searchlights,” a driving angsty rant with lyrics like “You are, for contradiction’s sake / Everything I remember that I swore I’d forget” (granted, hardly poetry, but better than most of the lyrics of its genre). It’s a song that I could see being a radio hit, with some serious studio finessing. The worst moments on the album are when Cook sounds a little too much like bands like Staind (songs like “Porcelain,” “Stitches,” “Let’s Go”), which is not a good sound for his voice. He’s much better when he doesn’t strain and instead plays it down a little, focusing on notes and melody rather than being just another angsty jock rock copycat. His rendition of “Music of the Night” a few weeks ago on Idol proves he’s got a great voice, but on Analog Heart it’s crowded out by excessively noisy guitar and drums.