His album artwork promises an artist with the velvety smoothness of a young, guitar-toting Kenny G, combined with the addle-brained exuberance of Richard Simmons on Oxycontin – but Max Morgan’s Interrupting the Silence delivers on neither promise, instead providing the listener with an idea of what it might sound like if Leo Sayer had replaced Kevin Cronin in REO Speedwagon. The answer to that question, in case you were wondering, is a lot of generic pop/rock grooves with plentiful falsetto and a few scoops of faux vocal grit, not to mention a load of embarrassing lyrical clichés (“Wait for Me,” in particular, would make Bryan Adams blush). Morgan is a technically sound vocalist, and when he manages to come up with the right material for his voice, he does a fine job of showing off his range, but often – as is the case with the groanworthy “Ya Better Believe” – he doesn’t know which dumb-ass lines to cut, or how not to beat a mildly pleasant groove until it’s dead. (“Believe” is only 3:14 long, but feels like a prog epic.) Morgan’s love for cheese is bottomless; he begins the closing track, “Prayer for No One,” with the line “Hello, Ground Control, I think we’ve got a problem,” channels Michael W. Smith on the weepy power ballad “Nobody’s Coming to My Rescue,” and generally tends to hit Disney Channel rock territory when he’s aiming for arena slayer status. The result is the CD equivalent of a tract home: The pieces are all assembled competently enough, but they’re made from such flimsy stuff, the effort was largely wasted. (Chime 2009)
