Toronto – Audrye Sessions is a Californian rock quartet consisting of frontman Ryan Karazija, bassist Alicia Marie Campbell, drummer James Leste and guitarist Michael Knox. They’ve just released their self-titled debum album on the label Black Seal.

So what’s Black Seal anyway?  I’ve never heard of this label before.  It turns out that it’s a unit of Sony BMG. While I will admit that you can find this information on the cd case, in teeny weeny print, they certainly don’t make it very clear. After doing a little digging, I’ve found out that Sony owns a bunch of these little “record labels”: J Records, Arista records, Polo Grounds, and Battery Records, to name a few.

The history of the music and record label industry is complex and sordid.

After doing some research, I’ve come to one conclusion: the history of the music and record label industry is complex and sordid.  Some of these little tiny labels appear to have been a result of acquisitions of small up and coming labels. In other cases, it appears that they were established from the get-go with funding from the big boys. Take Clive Davis, who started J Records in 2000 with a cool $150 million of BMG moolah (prior to the Sony BMG merger). This was after he was ousted from Arista records (which is linked to Columbia). So here’s a guy who was fired from one record label to start another one.  Guess who owns both labels now? You guessed it, Sony BMG. You see Simba, it’s all part of the great circle of life.

After reading some more of the history of music labels, I came to one discovery that led to one realization. The first is that about 70% of world-wide music sales comes from the “Big 4″ record labels: Universal, Sony BMG, EMI Group, and Warner. When you add up how much the top 5 music consuming countries spent on music last year, it’s about 16 billion (USD). My realization, which isn’t quite rocket science is as follows: the music industry reallys is an industry. It does all the things big industries do: make a profit by offering a service, trying to gain and then maintain a competitive advantage in the ongoing global fight for market share.

The songs certainly do sound like they’ve been carefully assembled by old veterans that know how popular music should be assembled. I don’t know if that’s a good thing.

So what does this have to do with the Audrye Sessions anyway? It was produced by two heavy hitters in the rock-world: Andrew Scheps (U2, Red Hot Chili Peppers), and Matt Radosevich (The Hives). This album consist of anthem-like ballads, and straight-up pop rock tunes that are, well, radio-friendly. To their credit, some of the songs on this album really gave me a feeling of being well-assembled. The songs certainly do sound like they’ve been carefully assembled by old veterans that know how popular music should be assembled. I don’t know if that’s a good thing.

Audrye Sessions have been compared to U2, Radiohead, and Muse. After hearing their title track “Turn Me Off” a few times, I could certainly pick up some of the Andrew Scheps U2-like fingerprints. The tracks have the right levels. The bass is right where it should be throughout, the vocals are strong, it all sounds like rock. But this music just doesn’t move me in any substantive way. I probably would have loved this in high school, but now it strikes me as over-produced; even formulaic.

It’s got all the right ingredients, but throwing all the right ingredients in a big pot doesn’t guarantee good gumbo.

So how does this all tie back to the music industry? Well, it is the purpose of the music industry to give us what we want. To sell records, they spend obsene amounts of money on A&R folks and talent scouts, not to mention exhaustive market and demographic research to accomplish two things: find out what the masses want, and give it to them. It’s not all that unreasonable to think that labels are going to start getting into grooves (or ruts?) when they find out what sells: let’s just do more of that. I think this record is a good example of that approach.

It’s got all the right ingredients, but throwing all the right ingredients in a big pot doesn’t guarantee good gumbo. After giving this album a few spins, I do appreciate that it has a certain mass-market appeal. It’s got simple lyrics that you can sing along to and that basic rock beat. But when I hear songs like “Julianna”, I can’t help but think “wow, am I just being manipulated by tried and true formulae”? It reminds me of seeing a Simple Plan music video where they shut down an entire bridge for the shoot, all the while telling us how hard it is to be a teenager and how tough high school is. But does Simple Plan really understand my teenage angst, or am I just being artfully manipulated? The picture is a lot clearer when you can see the forest from the trees.  But let’s be honest with ourselves here, if I was still a teenager, would I be able to detect this at all?  How about now?

I can’t say that there’s anything terribly inspiring to be found on this album. It’s well-assembled rock from old-guard producers created by ideally positioned young musicians that perfectly fit the pre-requisite mould for their target demographic market. If that last sentence sounds a little dry and vapid, it’s because it was re-written by my editor and then vetted by some market research. 2.5/5 PM’s.

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