Various Artists: Voyces United For UNHCR

Voyces United For UNHCR is a benefit album. You’ll have guessed that already from the title. It was released in Europe as a 2-CD set, and then in the U.S. as a single disc of fourteen tracks. I’m listening to the American version. The line-up features a bit of acoustic guitar, one unremarkable dance track, Mary Jane Lamond being swanlike and elegant in Gaelic, and several light pop songs of such brain-sucking vacuity that they drain the life out of everything around them like poisoned weeds in a garden. One singer tells me that she feels me inside her and another suggests that I follow my heart to find my dreams and I don’t know who these people are and I don’t dare to look up their names for fear that I will follow my heart to find them and then hit them, very hard, on the head, for while I am listening to Voyces United For UNHCR then visiting violence upon musicians such as this is indeed my dream. I am possessed of bloody urges, like Alicja Janosz in “Still Alive”, who threatens to kill her ex-boyfriend because she was, like, sooooo nice to him and now he’s dumped her, but she will survive, right? She’s still alive! Take that, ex-boyfriend!