Bright Nights Dark Days is the major-label debut of
Cavo and it sure feels like a big major-label album, the kind of multi-platform wannabe blockbuster that's rarely made in 2009.
Cavo has a little bit of everything for a modern rock audience raised on Guitar Hero: a dose of danger in the streamlined
Hinder-esque bad-boy anthem "Champagne," a little neo-grunge in "Crash," a sky-scraping power ballad in "Let it Go," all elements of a modern rock that flirt with American Idol-esque pageantry, due in part to the presence of
the Nixons'
Zac Maloy, previous collaborator of David Cook and Chris Daughtry.
Cavo may not have a frontman as finely groomed as either of those Idol finalists - they haven't been pulled through the star-making machine, at least not in public - but their music holds up well against Cook and Daughtry. It's melodic and insistent without being forceful, blending into the background yet slowly worming into your head, leaving you wondering how it got there. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine