Spun: Dina D’Alessandro

By Adam White

Elevator music is played on one’s journey upwards for a reason: it provides background ambiance, but it’s not supposed to stand out. While Dina D’Alessandro’s album Is it Safe? is clearly not elevator music, one could make a case for why it should be.

Whatever the album was trying to accomplish, it missed its mark. The problem is D’Alessandro tries to achieve too many things all at once. The guitar riffs and bass lines suggest a sort of watered-down punk, while the lyrics are purely pop. Lines like “Reality is just too much for me/Over and over in my dreams/I can’t escape this misery,” feel awkward, trying to convey something that isn’t there.

D’Alessandro tries too hard, which makes her lyrics fall flat. While hardly redeeming the negatives, tracks like “Masquerade” and “All the Time” are decent, if unremarkable. If you don’t listen to the lyrics, a few of the other tracks are catchy as well.

Is it Safe? tries desperately to recapture the pent-up girl rage Alanis Morisette tapped into with Jagged Little Pill but doesn’t succeed, resulting in an album even the most ardent angst fans will be disappointed with.