Shawn Hook – The Cosmonaut and the Girls

I can’t help but feel sorry for artists like Shawn Hook.  A local boy from way up in Nelson, British Columbia with a flare for pop music that some A&R representative has pumped up with unrealistic expectations.  Reading a journal entry on his website he talks about how his debut full length, The Cosmonaut And The Girl, is the product of four years of demos, writing collaborations, and more trips to the studio than a dog does to its coveted fire hydrant.  A career of major label immersion finds him talking about his fabricated, calculated, and over analyzed first effort as a defining, personal work of art – as if Hook, and only Hook, could produce such depth and clarity.

Reality is, Hook is just the type of carefully molded, forgettable teen heartthrob that shows up weekly on morning news spotlights and afternoon talkshows like Ellin.  Actually, as evidenced in his exhaustive thank you list on the casing’s liner notes, he’s already done that circuit.

I suppose I should give a few words about his actual music as well, but it’s just tough to comment on a sound when so much of Shawn Hook is based on image.  The Cosmonaut And The Girl is dependent on Hook’s admittedly solid vocal talent, and a whole boatload of damaging electronic clichés and overused singer-songwriter staples.  There’s the constant barrage of electronic handclaps in “Two Hearts Set On Fire,” the carefully calculated badass attitude of “Rockstarina,” the, nauseating thumping of “Every Red Light,” and even a piano led acoustic ballad of the latter.  Complete with a full violin introduction, “Dirty Little War” has catchy breakout radio-single written all over it.  So much of this album was born in the producer’s booth that it’s tough to tell how much say Shawn Hook really had in the process (I’m guessing very little, although he was likely led to thinking it was a lot…).

Mediocre at best, derivative at worst, The Cosmonaut And The Girl could very well amass some mainstream buzz.  Nothing here offends the way Canadian contemporary Jesse Labelle did with Perfect Accident a while back, but it remains along the same over-produced lines.  But a solo work should define an artist.  I walk away from The Cosmonaut And The Girl still oblivious to who Shawn Hook really is.

My advice to Hook: ditch the producers and EMI bigwigs, get back into the community (not Global TV’s morning programs) and do what you love without looking to others for approval.  You may just surprise yourself, and cynics like me.