This came out in 2000 — or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
No matter what the musical genre or era, Winnipeg always seems to produce one act that hits the mark. In the hippie-rock ’60s, it was The Guess Who. In the blue-collar metal ’70s, it was Bachman-Turner Overdrive. In the alt-rock ’90s, it was The Crash Test Dummies. Now, in the bubble-pop ’00s, we have a Next Big Thing boy band to call our own — McMaster & James.
For those locals who just emerged from their basement Y2K shelters, let’s recap: Two years ago, Luke McMaster and Rob James were a Top 40 duo called 2Face, playing the hits night after night as the house band at 8Trax Cabaret. Sometimes they slipped one of their own songs into the set. They went over so well that when one of their demo tapes reached BMG Canada, it signed the pair to its ViK label. Now they’re wading into the teen-beat fray, going up against the likes of Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync.
And judging by their debut disc, they should easily be able to hold their own. This self-titled 10-song offering has all the necessary elements for success in the bubblegum trenches — blue-eyed soul melodies, waist-deep harmonies, spry hip-pop backing tracks, dance-floor grooves, and most important of all, song after song about how they want you, need you, love you and don’t want to live without you, baby, oooh, yeah.
You think I’m kidding? Check the track list: Love Wins Everytime, Sweet Sensation, There Will Never be Another, Don’t Hold Back Your Love, It Must Be Love and on and on and on. Pretty much every lyric is straight from Boy Band 101. Sadly, but not surprisingly, so is much of the music, which more or less alternates between sticky-sweet BSB ballads and harmless dance-pop — aside from first single Love Wins Everytime, which earns extra credit and capitalizes on two, two, two trends at once by marrying its boy-pop melody to a zippy Ricky Martin groove.
Still, every now and then a flash of originality, a glimpse of the boys’ potential, finds its way through the cliches — a sexily rasped aside or an impressive vocal flourish here, a sophisticated Philadelphia soul melody or a bang-on Hall and Oates harmony there. These are the moments that suggest there just might be more to McMaster & James than meets the ear. Maybe, just maybe, once they find their feet in the music biz and get beyond the Teen People starmaker machinery, they might actually turn out to be pretty decent tunesmiths and singers.
If they’re lucky, they might even grow into Winnipeg’s next Next Big Thing — an adult pop band to call our own.
