Greg Laswell Reviewed
Greg Laswell
Through Toledo
(Vanguard)
Greg Laswell could have left “High And Low” off his sophomore album and no one would have said a word about Coldplay. Not a fucking word.
But there it is, like a stone dropped into still waters, letting the newly concentric circles fan out and taint the remainder of Through Toledo as if he and Chris Martin shared bastard’s blood. The tinkly piano sentimentality of “High And Low” aside, Laswell’s latest has “mature pop” written all over it with enough grit and lazy harmony to make it worth a second pass, and does it ever deliver. Starchy guitar parts lift “Amazed” and “Same As You,” while his passable if head-noddingly familiar vocal melodies tag the title track (a less obvious piano cut) and the stammering “Come Undone.”
— Steve Forstneger
Click here to sample “Through Toledo.”
