The Black Sorrows - The Chosen Ones (1993) Lossless

The music here is generic Adult-Oriented Rock (AOR), with some very pronounced Van Morrison influences evident, especially in the opening title track "The Chosen Ones" with a lead vocal that is an exact facsimile of Morrison. And then a bit further along, there's a cover of Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl", which again sounds just like Morrison's original.

The production throughout this album is very trebly-sounding, and the singing (especially from the female members of the band) can be very sharp and 'screechy' - rather harsh on the ears. And there's a similar overall lack of 'timbral depth' throughout the entire album, resulting in an absence of warmth, and a flat one-dimensional sound that gets to be rather grating after a while. As for the songwriting - quite nondescript, there's nothing here worth hearing twice.

The band's founder Joe Camilleri wrote the sleevenotes for this compilation, and there's a strong sense throughout that The Black Sorrows were just a bunch of musos who hung out at weekends - just mucking about really - with a high turnover of people passing through the lineup.

So in both the sleevenotes and the music, the band comes across very much as your basic 'jobbing band' ... fine for playing a few noisy rockers and some blue-eyed soul numbers for a good time down the pub on a Friday night, but not amounting to much when it comes to less sociable and thus more demanding musical activities, such as composition. Or learning about recording techniques ...

... in fact, the music here is much like the album's sleeve art: poorly conceived, and out-of-balance both in colouring (timbre) and in the way it's been laid out generally (presentation). Still, if you especially like Van Morrison (which admittedly, I don't), you might find some pleasure in listening to this.