‘Then I Held My Breath’ is the product of Sam Shinazzi, a singer-songwriter from Sydney. It’s his third album and truth be told, it’s not too far off the usual singer/songwriter affair that the market is currently saturated with.
Shinazzi seems to aim for the everyman stance that lyricists like Bruce Springsteen have perfected over the years and in the most part, he misses. Where the desired effect for this style is for anyone to be able to connect with it, it often falls into the trap of that it could have been written by so many different people.
That’s not to say that ‘Then I Held My Breath’ is an unpleasant listen, ‘Blue-Belle’ is a sweet lament and ‘Lil’ Wandering Soul’ is a respectable piece of folk-rock but without any real spark of inspiration or genius throughout, it all falls a little flat, particularly on ‘Walking’ in which the Springsteen comparisons are extremely easy to make.
‘This Could Be Something’ near the end of the album does save the album slightly, but for every moment where the lyrics and the music works together, there are too many moments where genericism overwhelms the listener and with so many talented people ploughing the same furrow as Shinazzi it’s hard to see any other outcome than this joining the massive pile of songwriters that fail to grab the public’s imagination or attention.
