Taproot - Blue Sky Research Review

Blue Sky Research is without a doubt different than Taproot’s previous offerings. For those unfamiliar with their work it makes a great stepping stone into their earlier and heavier work. With Blue Sky Research you get a grab bag of sounds all with the core Taproot sound intact. For those that are familiar with earlier Taproot you may find yourself disappointed with this recent transformation to a more accessible sound or like me you may just accept the new sound for what it is and realize that although different it’s still good music.

One of the main points that you’ll find yourself reading about is the production on this album. Most importantly you’ll hear that former Smashing Pumpkins/Zwan frontman Billy Corgan produced a number of tracks on Blue Sky Research. Secondly after your first listen you will notice the production quality, all of the tracks are a hell of a lot cleaner and better mixed than their previous works. You don’t get as gritty a feel as you did when listening to Gift or Welcome.

Now that all that is out of the way, what about the songs? Well there are definitely a few tracks that you need to hear. Specifically “Calling” and “Lost In The Woods” come to mind. “Calling” is probably one of the catchier tracks on the album. Their first single, “Calling” is has a nice background instrumental with a mix of bass guitar and snare drum and the frontman Steve Richards’ vocals are right on the money with the infectious chorus line:

“You\'re ca-ca-ca calling but I can\'t hear you, I\'m not listening anymore, you\'re subject to falling but I can\'t save you, I don\'t see you anymore.\"

The next track that stands out would be “Lost In The Woods”. This is one of three tracks produced by Corgan and his influence is a bit evident. Although nothing crazy or different “Lost In The Woods” is a solid rock track with great vocals and simple guitar and drum work bringing it all together.

So as you may have noticed I didn’t highlight many songs as being noteworthy, well honestly the fact is most of the tracks on [i]Blue Sky Research[/i] are just alright. It seems an album that took 28 months to make and had 80 songs written for it before the final tracks were chosen would have a lot more to offer. Unfortunately it doesn’t, too many of the tracks feel like fillers. “Hey the cd is only 30 minutes long, we should throw some more songs in there” Ok it’s not that bad.

Well when it comes down to it, is the album worth it? I bought it, but that probably doesn’t help you. I would say buy it if you like Taproot or if you are still stuck in the nu-metal wave. [i]Blue Sky Research[/i] pretty much boils down to a decent nu-metal album released a year after nu-metal was big. Had is been released a year or two ago, yes this album would have probably made Taproot something bigger. So listen to Calling and Lost In The Woods first and if you like what you hear, buy it. Yes, it’s that simple.

"Blue Sky Research" is on sale August 16, 2005 from Atlantic.