Critic's Review
Dean Carlson, All Music Guide
You know, one would think the year 2000 could've meant something. Instead of letting pent-up hostility toward a coddled, brutalized, and raped music culture burst out into another revolution of violent excess, listeners get the likes of fourth-rate Manic Street Preachers impersonators going through calculated motions as if Richey Manic was a "4-Real" Elvis, or worse, a steady flow of Jeff Buckley worshippers, metaphorically digging up the singer's body and feasting on his yellow, rotten flesh. Ireland's The Prayer Boat is such a grave-robber, and it's about time to take some militant action. "Soon the Stars Will Steer Me," "Dead Flowers" -- these are the track titles given. Emmett Tinely's voice shoots through these AOR songs of limp passion, ranging from a whispering Reamonn ("Saved") to a rather startling Natalie Imbruglia sibling ("Dark Green"), demanding about as much attention as a volume of Dostoyevsky gets in a Monday morning frat house. This is John Cougar Mellencamp, not Jeff Buckley, and there's going to come a time when the revolutionaries will lace their boots, cock their guns, and force 2000's disasters like this to start eating their own flesh. For starters, anyway.
