Ryan Cabrera Albums (3)
What The Critics Say
It's hard to look at Ryan Cabrera and not feel a twinge of sympathy. A wannabe teen pop idol who never was, Cabrera spent years dwelling in the shadow of the Simpsons, as the boyfriend of Ashlee and the client of her manager father, Joe, but never saw his star truly rise no matter how often he was on MTV or packaged in various TV shows. And so, after two albums on a major he's gone the independent route with his third album, The Moon Under Water. Perhaps it's a bit of an odd choice for an artist whose whole purpose has been to be a mass market star, but it was the only option left to Cabrera in 2008 and he makes the most of it, turning the album into a dark night of the soul, fueled by echoing Edge guitars and icy keyboard textures pulled from post-punk revivalists, all window dressing for songs that are still pop at heart. Cabrera might be hitting all the obvious marks but there's a sincerity to his reliance on clichés; as a product of mall culture, he's going for what he knows, spilling out his heart in the guise of surging atmospheric anthems. Underneath those textures -- as they do tend to dominate his thin, eternally boyish voice -- Cabrera recounts all manner of desolation, making repeated references to blackouts, breakups, isolation, loneliness, and fires on the hill, appropriate text for the moody music. Even if he once again succumbs to blunt commonalities instead of sly observations -- most notable on the murmured poetry of "Rise (The Dog Barks)," which plays like a manicured, polished David Baerwald (this is so obsessed with Los Angeles, it could pass for a dumbed-down Boomtown) -- the quivering sensitivity of his delivery and his stumbling soul-baring leave little question that he's genuinely trying to work out things. That makes for an album that's far more interesting than either of his major-label records, but it is telling that the songs that truly click are the ones with the boldest melodies -- namely the glistening "Sit Back, Relax," a blatant stab at neo-new wave that really works, and "Say," a near-incandescent pop tune almost worthy of Gregg Alexander. If he could harness that sense of melody and pull it into the slower tunes he could really have something, but right now he's still sorting things out, and it's better listening to him work through his troubles than try to hit the charts. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Ryan Cabrera became a star in 2004, as his debut album, Take It All Away, peaked in the Billboard Top Ten with its two singles, "On the Way Down" and "True," climbing into the Top 20 and Top Ten, respectively. Part of it was due to his slick, youthful spin on earnest post-alternative mainstream pop/rock like Third Eye Blind, Matchbox Twenty, and the Goo Goo Dolls (whose Johnny Rzeznik co-produced Take It All Away), but his popularity was due equally to his much-publicized doomed romance with pop tart Ashlee Simpson. This got his name in the tabloids and his face on MTV's The Ashlee Simpson Show, which went a long way to giving him a personality. Because of this, some fans may feel the desire to interpret the songs on his quickly released second album, You Stand Watching (it hit the streets 13 months after his debut), as a chronicle of his relationship with Ashlee and its aftermath, but the songs not only don't hold up under such scrutiny, they're not designed to invite such an analysis. They're songs about love lost and won, targeted at teens but produced to appeal to their moms. This was true on Take It All Away but You Stand Watching goes even further into the adult-pop breach, and Cabrera co-wrote all 11 songs and takes sole credit for the production, which downplays whatever harder edges Rzeznik brought to the debut. Thanks to his fondness for post-grunge guitar pop, he winds up with a record that has a bit more muscle than Clay Aiken, but certainly manages to straddle the adult contemporary and teen pop worlds in a similar fashion. If anything, Cabrera leans a little closer to the adult side of the fence, and the polished, anthemic sound of You Stand Watching was designed to have an all-ages appeal. Since Cabrera does write and deliver his own material, there is an impression that he's sincere about his tales of heartbreak. You Stand Watching is far from being either bad or offensive -- it's too well-produced and professional for that -- and despite the increased sense of safety and slickness, it will likely please fans of his first album since it pretty much delivers more of the same. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Golden-spiked pop/rock boy-child Ryan Cabrera is consumed by teenage heartbreak. As the protagonist for nearly every song on his (better than it should be) major-label debut, Take It All Away, he pines for loves both past and present like a deer on the highway faced with the field, the median, or the truck. For the most part it's the latter that the young "heart-rocker" chooses to get into it with, but the singer/songwriter/guitarist and his golden-tipped man-child/producer -- Johnny Rzeznik from the Goo Goo Dolls -- have concocted such a lively musical landscape for their "dear diary" lyrics that it's almost impossible not to smile amid the frank -- albeit clichéd -- emotional wreckage. From the opening "Mr. Blue Sky"-style piano rocker "Let's Take Our Time" to the falsetto-rich tenderness of "True," Cabrera proves himself to be more than just another pretty face with a lot of industry money behind him. He's got a great voice, a knack for incorporating Beatlesque key changes into otherwise mediocre melodies, and a healthy, irony-free take on angst that will earn him a raging sea of young women to wade through. Rzeznik fills each track with a combination of modern Pro Tools wizardry and good old-fashioned guitar playing -- ornate finger-picked acoustics appear randomly throughout -- and it's a testament to his industry tenacity that each one sounds like a potential hit. Take It All Away is as disposable as the pop genre itself, and Cabrera is the perfect proxy, but if he can ride out the fleeting fame and fortune that goes hand in hand with a big-money/radio-ready industry record, he might just have what it takes to build a career on his own terms. ~ James Christopher Monger, All Music Guide
