You Stand Watching

Album Review

Ryan Cabrera became a star in 2004, as his debut album, Take It All Away, peaked in the Billboard Top Ten with its two singles, "On the Way Down" and "True," climbing into the Top 20 and Top Ten, respectively. Part of it was due to his slick, youthful spin on earnest post-alternative mainstream pop/rock like Third Eye Blind, Matchbox Twenty, and the Goo Goo Dolls (whose Johnny Rzeznik co-produced Take It All Away), but his popularity was due equally to his much-publicized doomed romance with pop tart Ashlee Simpson. This got his name in the tabloids and his face on MTV's The Ashlee Simpson Show, which went a long way to giving him a personality. Because of this, some fans may feel the desire to interpret the songs on his quickly released second album, You Stand Watching (it hit the streets 13 months after his debut), as a chronicle of his relationship with Ashlee and its aftermath, but the songs not only don't hold up under such scrutiny, they're not designed to invite such an analysis. They're songs about love lost and won, targeted at teens but produced to appeal to their moms. This was true on Take It All Away but You Stand Watching goes even further into the adult-pop breach, and Cabrera co-wrote all 11 songs and takes sole credit for the production, which downplays whatever harder edges Rzeznik brought to the debut. Thanks to his fondness for post-grunge guitar pop, he winds up with a record that has a bit more muscle than Clay Aiken, but certainly manages to straddle the adult contemporary and teen pop worlds in a similar fashion. If anything, Cabrera leans a little closer to the adult side of the fence, and the polished, anthemic sound of You Stand Watching was designed to have an all-ages appeal. Since Cabrera does write and deliver his own material, there is an impression that he's sincere about his tales of heartbreak. You Stand Watching is far from being either bad or offensive — it's too well-produced and professional for that — and despite the increased sense of safety and slickness, it will likely please fans of his first album since it pretty much delivers more of the same.