Review Summary: The seven year wait wasn't worth it.
I realized sometime around 2018 when “According to You” popped up on my shuffle that I hadn’t heard anything from Orianthi in ages. I remember Heaven In This Hell coming out, thinking it was decent, if not a bit cliché, and moving on from it. Finding out she had started a duo band with Richie Sambora from Bon Jovi wasn’t exactly the thing I figured she’d be doing, but hey, who am I to judge? I’d rock with Richie Sambora given a chance. Now, here in 2020, she’s randomly put out a new album, the first music under her name since 2013.
So how is it? Well, to be blunt, it sucks. It’s a completely bland album that never finds a solid foot in any genre beyond “rock”, and even that is being generous to this. All the talent that Orianthi showed in her first three albums, especially “Believe”, is just completely gone from this album, the only hint showing up in the guitar solo in Sorry. The lyrics are a bunch of nonsense, such as the line “You flipped the wrong switch, brought out the worst in me, I’ll be the craziest bitch you don’t wanna meet” from Rescue Me or “smoke drifts off a crack pipe getting’ torn and bruised” from Streams of Consciousness. It all has this stink of modern rock country with none of the allure as well, with Streams of Consciousness feeling like a song that Carrie Underwood wrote, discarded, and producer Marti Frederiksen revived just to give to Orianthi. And that’s really the main issue with this album: Orianthi doesn’t use any of her skill on guitar. There’s nothing showing of the amazing guitar solo that you got back in 2009 from “According to You”, none of the guitar work that made Michael Jackson pick her up as his guitarist, and none of the talent that made her a national name ten years ago. Instead, you end up with this janky amalgamation of country, blues, rock, and pop, that ends up sounding like someone asked you to make a Carrie Underwood album but bad.
