What do ex-girlfriends do? They screw you up, that’s what they do. They also take your stereo, the TV, the Video, the beds, the sheets, the pillow, leaving you feeling like an alien in your own skin and fishing where the ice is thin. Providing they haven’t already taken your fishing-rod, of course. And what do you do to them? You use a screwdriver to get into their head, you leave them while they’re sleeping, you take a friend of theirs out to dinner, take off all her clothes and then leave your voice on her answer phone (well yours, actually, the one she slipped in with the rest of your everyday domestic appliances when she left, remember?)
Singer- songwriter Adam Cohen, son of legendary gloomster Leonard Cohen, takes us on a familiar enough journey on album ‘Ex-Girlfriends’ but sadly, this is the record’s one cruel twist. Whilst tracks like ‘Eleanor’, ‘Here She Comes’ and ‘Mockingbird’ glide and shine with seasoned tunefulness and panache the stock characterization and the over-familiar plot lines fail to lift a collection of rather catchy and radio-friendly pop tunes above their polished but unremarkable origins. Guitarist Michael Chaves provides some nice hooks but little detracts from the stockpile of lyrical clichés and lover-boy platitudes that Cohen has amassed in his armoury of the soul. It’s U2 one minute, Nada Surf and Cliff Richard the next.
Want to know just how cool this band is? The guitars the band used at a recent gig had ex-girlfriend’s names on them. That’s how cool…
The album sees contributions from Pat Leonard (Madonna), David Kahne (Sugar Ray, Sublime) and Keith Forsey (Billy Idol, Donna Summer).