Looking God in the Eye begins with the title track, which reminds me a lot of Supergrass’s “Caught by the Fuzz.”  It has a similar guitar sound and backing vocals.  It’s a pretty punchy, if short, song.  He keeps up the Supergrass influence for the second track, “There’s Something Out There.”  These songs get the album off to a pretty good start.  There is another punchy song, “Why Don’t You,” which is a pretty straightforward pop/punk song with falsetto vocals similar to Scissor Sisters.

There is another side to this album.  Casaverde vacillates from the Supergrass-sounding songs to mellow indie ballads like “Never Marry” and “Talisman.”  At times, the vocals sound a lot like Lenny Kravitz.

“The Magic” is a pretty solid song.  I want to call it a power ballad, but that evokes images of bad 80s hair bands and that’s not at all where I want to go with this.  However, “The Magic” is a blend of a power pop song and a ballad.  That’s really what I mean by power ballad.  This might be the best song on the album.  

I give credit to Casaverde for trying some different things.  And while some of the songs got my head moving, none of them really stuck with me.  Also, the recording quality is a little off with the vocals a little too low on some of the songs.  Nonetheless, Casaverde has some good things to build on and I think with some polish (notice I said polish, not overproduction), Casaverde could really be on to something.
 

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