Various: NZ Idol The Final 10: Homegrown

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: *)



Just to prove this column doesn't flinch from critical challenges, here's an assessment of the first music product from our own Idol franchise. Remember that all-New-Zealand-songs show from late March? Here's the recording studio version produced by show musical director Eddie Rayner.

Evidently it was done a bit fast, eh? That would explain some of the song titles not being quite right - it's Time Makes "A" Wine (not "the"); Don't Dream It's Over not ("Its") and Sittin' Inside My Head, (not "Sitting").

But there are greater flaws within the ensemble vocal tag team of Mark Williams' formerly perky disco-pop hit Yesterday Was Just the Beginning of My Life, which seems to last well into tomorrow as it drags on. Oh well, it was written by a couple of Australians.

Most of the rest induces a queasy feeling at hearing a great Kiwi hit single turned into something that sounds like it might help to sell plumbing supplies on a provincial radio station.

Though interestingly, the best offerings are the most recent - "Big Dave" Houma's version of Brooke Fraser's Better is inspired for the distance it manages from the original, and Filipo Sipani's take on Adeaze's A Life Without You sounds, as they say, an honest attempt.

Not a lot else does, especially the overwrought interpretations that the three songs from the Finn songbook seem to inspire.

More a curio than an album really, to be filed, quickly, next to - or perhaps behind - that TrueBliss CD.

Label: BMG