ORIANTHI: O (ROCK,-): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Supported by Santana and Steve Vai, hired by Michael Jackson and Alice Cooper, Orianthi has been building a flawless guitar playing career since she was a teenager. However, she has been playing more discreetly as a soloist for the past seven years and "Heaven In This Hell". Her escapade with Richie Sambora and the RSO project, revealed in broad daylight by the album "Radio Free America", undoubtedly had something to do with it. Anyway, it's an Orianthi more glamorous and mainstream than ever that comes back this year with her sixth album, soberly entitled "O".

Orianthi is an efficient guitarist, strongly influenced by Jimi Hendrix ('Sinners Hymn') and Slash ('Impulsive'). Of course she's talented but she's not as virtuoso as some people would like to say. Let's just say that she has remained for many years in her comfort zone, with aggressive bends and mostly pentatonic scales. Her music is clearly derived from blues and rock, and it is undoubtedly in this register that "O" is most convincing. The most rock tracks on the album really stand out and are by far the most successful. This is the case of the excellent and catchy 'Contagious' and its whammy pedal solo worthy of Tom Morello or the heavy blues 'Rescue Me' on which the rocky voice of the Australian shows his soul influences.

Alas, the album relies on eclecticism rather than coherence, sometimes happily (the beautiful ballad 'Crawling Out Of The Dark') but too often with the vain desire to attract the favors of the widest possible audience. The result is pop rock compositions without much interest ('Sorry', 'Moonwalker'), sometimes flirting with electro ('Company'), which strongly penalize an album that could have been, without its consensual bias, a successful attempt at modern classic rock.

In spite of its very current production and beautiful fulgurances, "O" fails to keep its promises and proves to be an uneven album. It's a great pity because Orianthi has talent and a real rock energy that only asks to break the chains of the musically correct. - Official website

ORIANTHI

O

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ROCK