Nicht Gut.
Maximillian Hecker is not American, as one may expect from his tornado-featuring album cover, but in fact German. According to his website, he began composing songs on the piano in 2000, and by 2001 his debut album, 'Infinite Love Songs' was released, shortly followed by 'Rose' in 2003 and 'Lady Sleep' last year. Herr Hecker's recording experience certainly shows on this fourth album – its sound is crystal clear and polished, although perhaps a little too much as throughout the record there is a lack of spontaneity and even genuine emotion in some places.
'Snow White' sets the scene for the rest of the album, a vocal-driven three minute track that aims to showcase Maximillian's singing talent but instead lets the listeners know that they're in for fourteen tracks of a breathy, rather weak and thoroughly uninteresting voice set to formulaic piano melodies. To make matters worse, he insists on singing about sleep, as if intent on encouraging listeners not to make it to the end of the album with their eyelids open and brains engaged. Brain engagement is not particularly necessary in order to listen to 'I'll Be A Virgin...' however, since most of it consists of syrupy sweet, will-to-live-removingly dull ditties that one would expect to hear Westlife performing over the speakers in a downmarket shopping centre.
Tracks such as 'Velvet Son' and 'Your Stammering Kisses' see Herr Hecker summoning up a little more energy, although nothing too stressful – the level that allows you get off the couch, but not enough to actually make a cup of tea just yet. These tracks are driven by acoustic guitar chords rather than vocals, and manage to rouse the listener from impending slumber, if only for the first half of the songs – after that they slip into repetition, like every single one of the tracks here. It's as if the artist has some sort of attention span disorder, as he manages to carry out an original idea (albeit one that is only just original) for about a minute and a half, then settles on repeating himself for the next two minutes. After a few tracks this pattern grows wearisome in the extreme.
In an album that is essentially nothing but a collection of bad ballads, its difficult to pick out any as being particularly noteworthy – either due to their success or failure. Since there are none here in the former category, it is only fair to give special mention to the unbearably cheesy title track, as well as 'The Saviour' and the oddly-titled 'Feel Like Children', the latter of which feature over the top stringed moments, not to mention whining lyrics (although even this reviewer feels it unfair to pick on the lyrics too much, since Herr Hecker is not writing in his native language).
'I'll Be A Virgin, I'll Be A Mountain', may have something to offer fans of pop and/or light rock – it is polished, has "heartfelt" lyrics, and plenty of light, twinkly guitar and piano bits. It has three major faults however, the first being that it is just outrightly boring – there are only two types of song here, and they are fast ballad and slow ballad; and even after four or five listens it is impossible to pick out any tracks as standing out from the rest. The second is that every song is based on a weak idea that soon runs out, and is then repeated until a three or four minute quota of time is filled. Thirdly comes the fact that all these tracks are fundamentally cheesy and shallow; of course, that is a matter of taste and there is a place for cheese, but at the end of the day this isn't even fun cheese – it's just boring.