Here And Now

An old friend by a new name

There’s no point keeping it a secret that no one expected surprises from the new work by the acclaimed Canadian rock act Nickelback. To make this band play something different and unexpected, something extraordinarily unlikely must happen. Nickelback songs must leave airplay, Nickelback videos must get out of music channels rotations, and the ensemble itself must move from arenas under the roofs of tiny clubs where no one seems to care about music. So far, we are observing a picture of the contrary. Nickelback are still considered Canada’s absolutely best rock performer and one of the world’s top rockers as well. It was them who made everyone speak about such a thing as Canadian rock and they remain the genre’s most famous representatives. How bad do they have to hit their heads to leave playing it for the sake of grumbling critics and lose millions of listeners and millions of monetary units? In brief, getting to know the new album by the Canadians, Here And Now, is more like meeting an old friend who has just changed his name.

Kroeger stands for invariability

The most interesting thing about Here And Now is that despite the genuine desire shared by the musicians to do something previously unheard, we still get to hear the old Nickelback. Because we hear Chad Kroeger’s voice and this guy is not going to change, don’t you doubt that. And the slightly beefed up rhythm section, slightly extended solos vanish, fade and disappear far behind his singing, never reaching us. Chad has not matured a tiny single bit as he keeps telling his stories about living by the bar counter (Bottoms Up), winning love battles (Midnight Queen), and staying a rock-and-roller (Gotta Get Me Some). You will easily find on the album the future hits, pretty heavy This Means War, and outrageously pop-framed When We Stand Together with a chorus molded specially for radio. Short of enthusiasm, yet full of pathos, Chad Kroeger sang several obligatory lyrical pieces, Lullaby, Trying Not To Love You, Holding On To Heaven. A standard set without bad mistakes and great deeds.

Law of genre consistency

Nickelback decided long ago that they should stay away from a dangerous path to the valley of experiments, search and unavoidable errors. The whole narrow range of plain, yet effective, riffs that clanged on the band’s previous CD, is in its entirety presented on Here And Now. The frontman sings the same things and in the same way. This record is a perfect prey for the beasts of critics who look for new blood. If you want to, you can effortlessly find your reasons to accuse Here And Now of predictability, mediocrity, triviality and insincerity, you can name many more. But the Canadians are well aware that for each angry critic they have a dozen delighted listeners who want nothing but music like that. All the debates about crossing the boarder between inspired creating and selling off lie in the field of theory, while in practice we have a band with hundreds of followers, thousands of fans and millions of listeners. And their fresh work will only prove the stability of this balance.