Album review: OneRepublic's 'Waking Up'

A muscular, Timbaland-shaped shadow loomed over the unlikely success of OneRepublic's debut album "Dreaming Out Loud." His inescapable remix of the band's single, "Apologize," vaulted the group to multi-platinum sales and took frontman Ryan Tedder into the upper ranks of songwriting pens-for-hire in pop for Leona Lewis, Rihanna, Beyoncé and many others.

Much of that record and Tedder's outside writing were a weak broth of dorm-room-canoodling ballads and R&B with very little rhythm or blues. Fortunately, on OneRepublic's second album "Waking Up," they've internalized a lot of the things that made Timbaland such a compelling producer -- that good sounds are paramount, songs should move in odd directions and many different ideas can constitute a hook.

That's not to say "Waking Up" sounds anything like Aaliyah or Missy Elliott. But the filtered dubstep drum loops and the Afro-pop marimba of "Missing Persons 1 & 2" have a real playfulness missing from the ceaseless Cinemascope of Tedder's older efforts. "Marchin' On" takes a backing vocal hook and writes a whole song around it, earning the bigness of its flags-and-fighting imagery. Even the overreaching piano musings like "All This Time" have a solo-McCartney goofy sweetness about them.

The band needs to stop mistaking the cello as an inherently "meaningful" instrument -- it's too often deployed for maximum syrupiness. But Timbaland should be proud; OneRepublic is using his old tricks even better than he is lately.

-- August Brown

OneRepublic
"Waking Up"
Mosley Music/Interscope
Three stars (Out of four)

Comments

[Henson]

Agree! this is one of the best albums of 2009!

Don't agree with the cello thing. Cello is a beautiful instrument, but i agree it's been overused by them.

I just hope this album doesn't hit sophomore slump, since there's really slow promotion going on.