This Loud Morning is a curiously appropriate title for a
David Cook album. Unlike so many rockers,
Cook makes music not for the dead of night but for the crack of dawn, music that greets the day with a modicum of measured inspiration. This is particularly true of this 2011 sophomore set, an album that sands down any lingering rough edges from his 2008 post-American Idol major-label debut. Strangely enough, these rough edges include not only the faster songs that peppered David Cook but anything resembling a discernable hook. Every cut marches along with a stately purpose and each track is colored with countless guitars, so many that it stands to reason that this album would sound loud, yet it never does. Everything is tempered and deliberate, which isn’t to say it’s insincere:
Cook emotes with gusto, never stopping to consider that his singing is lacquered over by all those guitars. So,
This Loud Morning winds up as an album that’s primarily textural mood music for the morning, and one that’s not all that loud either. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine