Track Listing

1. Best
2. Tonight
3. Lose It
4. No Subject (Come with Me)
5. This Is Who We Are
6. I Will Hide Myself Away
7. Wasted
8. Fortunate
9. Georgia
10. If You Do, If You Don't
11. Lonely One
12. If I Were to Write the Song
13. Wasted [Mix] - Cartel, Wyclef Jean

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #95085 in Music
• Released on: 2007-08-21
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Customer Reviews

Get Chroma instead!
After the superb 'Chroma', Cartel have released their second full length album, which I bought with high hopes. However, their self titled album does not match their previous offering at all.

The album begins with 'The Best', a dull offering that starts the album with no real punch or urgency, by the time the track begins to build up some steam it's over: a waste of a first track. Predictably, this dreary start is improved with 'Tonight' Although not as striking as I would had hoped, it gets the album on the right track. 'Lose It' is much better, if the first single was a season it would most definately be summer, the bouncy guitars complement Will's vocals very well; it's one of the better tracks on the CD.

As soon as things are looking up, we are blessed with 'No Subject', flying the flag for mediocrity. Although not bad, its a sign of a band going through the motions. Thankfully, 'This Is Who We Are' is exactly what you would expect from a Cartel album, delivering crunchy guitars and Will's dynamic vocal lines. Unfortunately, things take a turn for the worse; 'I Will Hide Myself Away' is god-awful. It's like the band found two boring tracks in the dark corner of the cutting room floor and then proceeded to stick them together with masking tape; you half expect the band to apologise at the end for wasting 6 minutes of your life.

'Wasted' is better, but only just. Take away the lyrics and you'd expect to hear it in a carnival setting; how it can be pulled off live I don't know, there's barely a hint of gear such as guitars, bass, drums etc. 'The Fortunate' is the last good track on the CD and is bound to have everyone jumping up and down, but the fact that it still wouldn't be good enough to get onto Chroma says a lot about this CD's quality. The next three tracks get progrssively worse, and don't get me started on the Wyclef remix of Wasted, a vomit inducing re-hash of a poor, poor track.

After reading this, you may be confused as to why i've given this 3 stars. In truth, I really REALLY like this band, and I really wanted to enjoy this CD but its hard to do so. Chroma, their last offering, still manages to get regular attention on my iPod, and so maybe my high expectations have lead me to dislike this release. Stand-alone its worth a go simply for Lose It, This Is Who We Are, and even Tonight; but if you are looking for your first Cartel purchase then this isn't what you should be buying.