Artist: Watershed
Label: EMI Records
Release: 2010
Running time: 88:34
Rating: 2.5/5
I’d love to tell you that South Africans Watershed are some clever kind of allegory for the self-titled album by Swedish experimental prog metallers Opeth. Dream on, sweet dreamer, in some other movie. After just 4 albums, these cosmetically polished soft rockers, a bunch of guys with perfectly gelled hairdos, are already getting their first best-of compilation. How times change, huh? Back in the day, bands put out 8 albums over 10 years before they got their first compilation. Times are new, and for a whole decade now the money has been flowing a lot more “play-it-safe” style. Creativity is unwelcome because it raises the investment risk. Watershed are a product of that “play-it-safe,” devastating label policy. There’s less originality here than a frog has feathers on its head. And yet they get rewarded. They’re stars, under the wing of EMI Records, with a bag full of hits. If that’s fair, let a bolt of lightning strike me down on the spot.
Easygoing guitar rock with a gorgeous boyish vocal. All neatly packaged and trimmed so it doesn’t stick out of the bounds of conformity. The band broke through in Germany in 2002 with the hit Indigo Girl, and from then on, besides enjoying success at home, Watershed became a European band too. Look at similar German bands, only with German lyrics, and it makes a lot more sense where Watershed’s success in Germany comes from.
The songs on the compilation are shuffled regardless of when they were written. They don’t follow chronological order like the album releases. Interestingly, there are no big differences between them in arrangements or style. They’re dressed in a predictable structure, with the basic motifs built on 4-5 chords. The triviality of the expression is underlined by a predictable combination of pretty major-key motifs that take the dominant position. For instance, it’s interesting that the brand new song A Million Faces (the title track), written recently, doesn’t stray far from Shine On Me off the debut studio album, which came out in 2002. The vocal is demanding and cast to fit the figure of the song. A little suffering, a little whining, a little playing the part of the torn-up broken heart, and that’s exactly what goes down best with the “prim and pious” girls who’ve headed out on their first trip into nightlife without their parents.
Two songs from live performances close out the second disc. The first is a recap of the mega hit Indigo Girl, which helped put the name Watershed on the world map. In its second half it carries a stretched-out, lively, rock-charged instrumental section, a reminder that there are excellent musicians behind the Watershed name, with a long kilometer of real jams behind them and not just cosmetic powdering aimed at pleasing the masses.
The second of the two “live” songs is United By The World. This one is totally new and shows that Watershed are a lot harder-rocking on stage than the résumé of polished studio-album production would suggest. The predictable, archaically packaged look of the hits desperately needs this kind of energy injection.
I’ll say it straight: Watershed are good musicians. Quite a bit better than the studio shows. The songs are nicely structured, with recognizable, well-defined lead motifs, as well as a suitably dosed arrangement interplay, especially in the guitar-keyboards backing curtain. But with very little, if any, creative spark that would dictate any kind of artistic distinction in Watershed’s content.
So, three new tracks, at least calming the feeling by a pinch that “A Million Faces 20 Hits – 10 Years” is a new cash cow, even if the background is familiar. But even that probably won’t stem the mass layoffs at EMI Records. Personally, I think best-of compilations from bands that can’t muster any radical self-evolution in four studio albums are smoke and mirrors and a perfect marketing trick, which, in the case of a band like Watershed, fishes money out of the pockets of swooning teenage girls whose hormones have thoroughly scrambled their heads. “A Million Faces 20 Hits – 10 Years” is a compilation meant strictly for the band’s fans. So Watershed, decked out in platinum and plenty of awards for the hottest band on the planet, are once again inviting them to reach into their pockets for three new songs. All for the good of the corrupt label policies a la EMI Records. So the big day has come for culture and the flourishing of rock. You don’t believe it, do you?
Lineup
Craig Warren Hinds – vocals, acoustic guitar, piano, harmonica
Nic Rush – guitar
Hylton Brooker – keyboards
James Sunney – bass guitar
Peter Auret – drums
Track list
CD1.:
1. The World Needs You*
2. Indigo Girl
3. Breathing
4. Shine On Me
5. Letters
6. A Million Faces*
7. Live Another Day
8. Southern Cross
9. Close My Eyes
10. Love It
11. Thank You
CD2.:
1. Train Ride
2. Lovely Day
3. Angel
4. Crazy
5. Yesterday Again
6. Future Sunshine
7. Fine Way
8. In The Meantime
9. Closing Down
10. United By The World* (live)
11. Indigo Girl (live)
*… new songs
