Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 5/10
The album’s instruction is clear, even if the final result isn’t. Get Up may be the command of an artist with so many hit songs and great tours behind him but his latest offering, the directive familiar of a thousand sleep induced mornings or the order to carry on the Rock fight, falls somewhat short of being an incisive and authorative instruction by the Canadian Rock legend.
The new album limps along at a steady pace, it shuffles, arguably nervously, towards what could be considered its natural conclusion and yet even in the midst of a bond of middling sterility and punch-less songs, it finds a way to dig out its self out the tempting obscure fade by offering four songs in an acoustic manner which actually tempt the heart and pull the album back from the brink.
It is a shame to be so disheartened by any album, the thought that as the listener you somehow haven’t afforded any time to truly get to know it, that you have found a way to scratch your head and wonder if you are at fault, despite giving it more air time than allowed the Green Party in any general election build up; sometimes the urge to Get Up falls flat on its face.
Whilst Bryan Adams will always be a firm favourite and perhaps even sneaking respect to those who shy away from such in built familiarity, it still seems as though the great man, for a couple of mediocre albums doesn’t change that fact, is still searching for a way past his highs of the late 1980s and early to mid 1990s. That being saddled with some of the truly cool Rock songs of the age, stadium fillers and perhaps distracting long term anthems have somehow eaten into the psyche and given a feat worth conquering too a high a price.
The album plods along but in the final four songs, acoustic re-workings of tracks that hide behind unfurnished sentiment, spring forth with better aptitude and strength and in We Did It All and You Belong To Me a redemption is found, a purpose to the album that takes it out of the doldrums and at least into a place where the music is given the means to shine.
It might be that the first highs anybody sets themselves, the easily impressive goals which blister the sky like an exploding far off sun can never be truly attained again, on the evidence of Get Up, which is perhaps the sad finality of it all.
Ian D. Hall