The reggae beat is alive, but kind of over-produced.
Los Angeles-born and raised vocalist Elan kicks out some perfect tunes for sitting around the pool on his first major label release "Together As One," with solid bass lines and tight drum fills.
The 11-track album has an incredibly strong Bob Marley sway to it — Elan actually sang with Marley's band, The Wailers, between 1997 and 1999, and it shows.
Even with Marley's powerful influence, the songs don't have a sharp, heartfelt edge to them like the reggae masters' jams did back in the day. Rather, Elan's tracks have a squeaky clean, unemotional feel.
Part of the genius behind Marley's music was the pure rawness of expression. Unfortunately, as much as Elan's voice sounds like Marley's, he doesn't carry the same amount of emotional weight.
It's an impossible task to live up to the legendary Marley and Elan is probably more aware of that than anyone.
But if Elan understands that it's impossible to live up to Marley's music, why is he trying to perfectly imitate it?
Well, one reason might be that Elan understands how to make money, and copying Marley will bring in the dough. Or perchance, Elan doesn't have any original ideas of his own and would rather pay homage to the brilliant reggae virtuoso than create his own sound.
Either way, the album has a nice overall groove to it, because of the similarity to Marley, but it's the spotless exactness of Elan's music that really holds the album back from communicating a sense of pure musical voice.
Songs seem to be trapped in a sealed box of major label authority, whereas Marley's melodies were able to escape the trap of a corporate sound.
The involvement in the project of the two members from the no longer cool and poppy band No Doubt may have something to do with the unemotional beats.
Gwen Stefani, lead singer from No Doubt, joins Elan on the sixth track, "Allnighter." The whole song sounds like it could have been done on a computer, almost video-game like, and Stefani sings corny lines about love in a monotonous voice.
"And since the first time your lips touched mine I thought I died," sings Stefani in her opening line and continues with another cliché line, "And I can tell you that the road won't wind. … It's a bumpy ride from time to time."
With computer generated beats creeping more and more into the world of music, it's refreshing to hear the human factor in music which, unfortunately, Elan's debut has very little.
The man who can be attributed to most of the sad aspects on the album is Executive Producer Tony Kanal, also a member of No Doubt (bass player).
For some reason, with a bunch of talented reggae artists working on the album, Kanal didn't allow any sort of immediacy or passion to develop. Everything is very bottled up and structured.
"Together As One" is a solid reggae album, but with minimal natural passion. It's hard to recommend this album when you could go buy a Marley album instead, so I won't. Save your pennies for Marley, not some imitator from Los Angeles.
