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In Los Angeles, California, the Dream Center acts as a sanctuary for the hungry, homeless and the hopeless.
Not only is it a place for the broken to go for a good night's sleep or a decent meal, but it's also a place of
ministry. One of the ministry groups at the Dream Center is a young group called Press Play.
The debut artist on the Dream Center's record label, Dream Records, Press Play took thirteen of the songs they perform
live and put them together on one offering called Life Is Beautiful.
Life Is Beautiful gets off to a rough start with "Break It Out." It has somewhat of a boy band feel to it,
except it consists of music that wouldn't even have been good back in the glory days of boy band pop. The chorus ends
up being boring, and has way too much of a "hey-o, hey-o" chant in it. It's followed up by "I Give My Love," which
pretty much continues in the N*Sync vibe, with even worse synth than before. Also, in part of the chorus, vocalist
Dave Hanley tries to take his John Cooper-esque voice higher than the rest of the song, and it's apparent that he's not
too capable of such a feat. It also becomes noticeable that female vocalist Paige seems to be trying to copy the vocals
of Nirva Dorsaint from the TobyMac crew. What happens next is unbearable. "Say Say" is, I guess, a hip hop-ish song.
There are a couple guest vocalists near the end that actually sound really good, even within the confines of the
mediocre background music (which, in the chorus, includes an obnoxiously-played organ, like the kind you would hear at
an old school baseball game), but Dave and Paige lead the song up until then, making it hard to stick around for the
guest vocalists.
A decent sounding Spanish guitar brings in the next song, "I Love Who You Are," still retaining a pop sound,
but very much unlike the first few. It actually is kinda reminiscent of something you might hear from Natasha
Bedingfield. It fares better than the beginning tracks, then jumps into the album's first radio single, "Life Is
Beautiful." It's an alright song, with some strange xylophoney music in the verses, but with the return of Dave's
vocals, the overall sound quality drops a little. When the pianist Joel takes up main vocals on
"Angels Sing," a heartfelt worship song that isn't really anything new to the genre but has some good lyrics along the
way, it offers much better music than what we've been exposed to thus far on Life Is Beautiful. It's a possible
album highlight, odd as it may be. Another change in music style brings us to "Sound of Love." A strange change, as
well. The pre-intro could almost have been written by Danny Elfman, but about fifteen seconds in, the actual intro
comes in, and then it sounds like it could have been written by And Then There Were None. From there, it just
goes into a sound like any modern youth-oriented praise & worship group (SONICFLOOd and Hillsong United come to mind).
"Unashamed" brings back a little of the feel of "Angels Sing," just not as effectively, with Dave's vocals once
again bringing things down (especially when he plays around with his voice at the end of each line), and then the
beginning of "Fixation" is almost a spitting image of AFI's "Miss Murder" (also kinda resembling Family Force 5's
"Radiator"), where his vocals are almost at the peak of annoying in the chorus (the singing of "I can't live without You
he-yuh, I can't live unless I know You're ne-yuh" is like nails scratching on a chalkboard). By this time,
I'm longing for the Nirva copycat vocals to come back. The annoyance, however, takes a backseat in another worshipful
song, "Praise The Lord," a tone that continues through "Fill This Place" (thankfully featuring Paige on main vocals
again). "I'm Alive" is also slightly worshipful, but more in an upbeat style similar to Jeremy Camp (with a touch of
Stellar Kart to add some sugary pop/punk to it). Oddly, Press Play chose to follow up such an upbeat song with one of
the slowest tracks on the entire album. "One Life" starts with nothing but a piano and Dave singing rather quietly
(and way too breathy). It's not until about two minutes in that it picks up at all, and when it does, you would almost
wish that it didn't, just so the vocals wouldn't sound the way they do.
To sum everything up, there's two main problems with Life Is Beautiful. The first being that it seems like
Press Play doesn't quite know what genre they're going for. The album jumps all around the board, with some pop, some
hip hop, some alternative, some dance and even some modern praise & worship. The second problem is that whatever style
they're doing at the moment, they're most likely not doing a good job of it. As mentioned, there are several times
where it isn't so bad (The beginning of "I Love Who You Are," or the worshipful ballad "Angels Sing" are good examples).
But for the most part, Life Is Beautiful just feels like AC radio's failed attempt to be edgy. But in reality,
the music is less than mediocre, and is sometimes painful to listen to. Lots of respect to Press Play for the work they
do at the Dream Center, but they definitely need to get things together before they can even think about a sophomore
project.
- PReview date: 4/29/09, Review date: 5/13/09, written by Scott Fryberger of Jesusfreakhideout.com
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The first album from new group Press Play, called Life is Beautiful,
is essentially a music melting pot as it incorporates many different
sounds and styles. Sadly, Press Play's attempt to patch
hip-hop/pop/rock/praise and worship together fails to catch lightning
in a bottle. Early on, Dave Hanley's vocals coupled with techno
influenced pop rock give the songs "Break It Out" and "I Give My
Love" a feeling that is reminiscent of Skillet's album, Invincible.
Unfortunately, the tunes are not quite as smooth and in general the
songs are quite flawed. Also entering the equation is an element of
hip hop which is generated by the female vocals of Paige, repetitive
beats, and a guest appearance by rapper iROCC Williams. It's worth
noting that while Paige provides Press Play with a Group 1 Crew
sound, but after the first several tracks she doesn't make another major
appearance until "Fill This Place." Aside from pretty standard praise
and worship songs, Life is Beautiful identifies a lot with Worth
Dying For's debut project in the fact that it's worship set
to upbeat pop rock music. Sadly, other than the techno/dance driven
"Sound Of Love" and the soothing ballad "One Life," very few of the
songs are memorable, and, more often than not, very forgettable. The
lyrics also fail to grab attention except at very low moments which
will likely entice some grimaces with the less than inspired song
writing. Once again, "One Life" sticks out with its message to try to
live life avoiding regrets and mistakes. However, while that formula
works, it's not a terribly original way for an album to end. An album
which relies on wreckless energetic beats and over-the-top worship
songs that state "Cause you and me, will always be/ We've got the
best thing going on" will likely cause listeners to hit skip on Press
Play's debut.
- Nathaniel Schexnayder
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Record Label: Universal Music Christian Group / Dream Center
