Backstreet Boys - This Is Us - Review

This Is Us At A Glance:
FABTASTIC!: Straight Through My Heart, Bye Bye Love, All Of Your Life (You Need Love), Masquerade, Helpless
Great: Bigger, If I Knew Then, This Is Us, PDA, She's A Dream, Shattered,
OK: Undone
Below Average:
What Were They Thinking?:

The Backstreet Boys are back with a brand new record, and it's rather brilliant! It's similar to recent material from New Kids On The Block and Darin - A very modern dance/pop/r'n'b hybrid and the new record, titled "This Is Us" is a rather great listen! I think if you stuck the best bits of Darin/NKOTB and this album on one disc from one artist, it'd be unbeatable, but I'm going off on a tangent here - So on with
the review!

The disc kicks off with the modern pop/dance sound that's all the rage about now which signifies the start of the lead single Straight Through My Heart. The track is an intense one that juggles the amazing synths with great vocals from the boys and some great lyrics and a killer chorus - All in all? A pretty impressive single that really showcases the album's sound fantastically!. So fantastic! Next up, the softer piece, and uptempo dance/ballad number (well, kinda) - Bigger. The guys sound brilliant, and the lyrics are fantastic here too. There's a beautiful delicateness that the track has - It's catchy, but it does feel like it's missing something that Straight Through My Heart has in spades. Either way, a decent enough track that I really quite like. Bye Bye Love, sounding very Chris-Brown-Forever-ish, is a rather brilliant one! The Forever beat that I mentioned a minute ago is brilliant, and the guys still sound fantastic - Pair it with a hooky, fun chorus like you've got here and
you've got a hit on your hands! A really catchy piece that I quite like! Next up, one my favourite (if not my overall favourite) tracks on the album All Of Your Life (You Need Love). As always on the album, the guys sound fantastic and the lyrics are great - but here they are layered over a really sunny, hands-in-the-air, europop infused version of their sound and it works absolutely brilliantly! A killer dance piece that just has to be released as a single - A great piece!

If I Knew Then, the album's first real "r'n'b" piece is an interesting one. It's more than listenable, with the guys in fine form with a more than catchy vibe - but something about it does rub me the wrong way, which is a bit of a shame. Not my favourite on the disc, but still decent enough. This Is Us, another of the album's r'n'b/ballad tracks, is (very much like the last track) a decent enough track that's more than listenable with flashes of brilliance - like the chorus here - but something about the rest of the track just doesn't quite sit right - Either way, a nice enough track, but not my favourite. PDA, with a real Eminem opening vibe, takes things back in an electro/pop/dance direction - and it's all the better for it! The lyrics are fun, the guys sound great but the really brilliant moment here is the completely synthtastic chorus - Absolutely brilliant! Would I have picked it as the lead (like Wiki suggests it was going to be)? No. But do I like it? Definitely! The retro touches are nice too! The verses of Masquerade are pure brilliance! Deep, dark, energetic, intense and very Black-Eyed-Peas with the guys sounding totally brilliant! I'm slightly less keen on the chorus, it's a little high-pitched compared to the rest of the song, but still - How can you parse amazing verses like this up - If only the verses of this were thrown with the chorus of PDA - I'd be in pure musical heaven! - Can somebody please arrange that? Great! Thanks. A killer track!

Things slow down on She's A Dream, with a real r'n'b ballad vibe taking over. I love the tribal influences here, the chants are great - but I'm not so sold on the track. The lyrics and vocals are all fine enough, but something about the track does rub me the wrong way. It's a decent enough piece though! Shattered, another of the album's "ballads", is possibly my favourite track of the sort on the disc. The guys sound great, the lyrics are fantastic and the track has a great pop/r'n'b hybrid. The piano here is quite nice and the track just comes together quite nicely - I really do like the chorus - Almost epic. Undone, the album's "closer" is another of the album's ballads - And it's another great one! The guys sound brilliant, the lyrics are nice - but something about the song is quite different - and I really like it. The opening effect is brilliant, and the song has a "freshness" about it that I really like it. I'm not sold on the chorus - but I like the rest! Last on my disc, billed by Wiki as a European bonus track, is Helpless - featuring Pitbull. A darker dance/pop/r'n'b piece somewhere between PDA and Straight Through My Heart - It's intense, gloriously dancey and boasts a killer vocal from the guys. The verses are fantastic, and the chorus is just so synthy - Though I just really, really want to change of the lines - It just could be so much better! Pitbull's rap is entirely unobjectionable and
I'm just amazed that this didn't make the album's final cut - Why? - All in all, A great album!

Source : BSB Anonymous MySpace

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