Miller's Lane

CD Cover Hemant Rao
Independent

Review by Alphonse Leong


You expect some incorporation of personal experience into any artistic endeavour, but cute childhood photos on a CD insert are just too much. The songs, too, have that same cloying self-awareness. Hemant Rao has a sweeter-than-Richard Marx voice and he is the writer/producer/engineer of this competent but rather staid collection of guitar-based songs.

From precious reflection on "Fifteen Years" and "Miller's Lane" to playing victim on "Carrying On," Rao tries to engage our sympathies, but, apart from noting a few choice guitar lines, I'm unmoved. Bassist Anthony Kerr and drummer Lindsay Belloc are a decent rhythm section and the arrangements aren't offensive, but the material probably has its greatest impact on Rao's friends and relatives.


Artist Contact Info: P.O. Box 54077, Pacific Ctr. N. Postal Outlet, 701 Granville St., Vancouver, B.C., Canada, V7Y 1B0



First published in Drop-D Magazine on November 28, 1997

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