Lorraine Ferro has had a journeyman's career in the music business, making ends meet by singing for various commercial sponsors, writing songs for others (notably some CCM hits), and finally recording her own album, Languishing in Turbulence, in 2001. Four years later, she re-emerges in a group context, paired with guitarist Geoff Sobel as Loudlife, a band that sounds like it was patterned after the success of Evanescence. Sobel provides the hard rock guitar riffs over a rhythm section of bass player and producer Teddy Kumpel and drummer Brian Dunne, while Ferro does the rest, which consists of writing her typically impassioned lyrics and singing them with heart-wrenching fervor. Whether she is singing of romantic devotion in terms of sexual obsession, as in "May I Print," or angrily denouncing the compromises she's made in life, as in "Turn the Page Over," the point of both her words and her way of singing them is an expression of extreme feelings. Ferro is no stranger to clichés in her writing, and her singing is full of echoes of better-known performers, which is no doubt what endears her to makers of commercials. In this sense, Sobel, who knows his way around the standard sound of hard rock/heavy metal guitar, is a good match for her. But originality is sometimes less valuable in pop music than familiarity, and acts far less talented than Loudlife have enjoyed successful careers. Ferro has seemed to be on the edge of a breakthrough for some time, and this may be the vehicle for it.
© William Ruhlmann /TiVo