David Sneddon is a proper musician. Not a pop muppet. Not a talent show chancer. It's a point he's keen to hammer home - the title of his debut album pointedly contrasts the length of time he spent struggling to get a break with the duration of his stay in TV's Fame Academy, which finally brought him to public attention. "I've been a musician for seven years. To anyone with half a brain, 10 weeks on a TV show is nothing" he states defiantly in the sleevenotes. Glad we cleared that up.
Yet while Sneddon can undoubtedly play the piano, possesses a strong, anodyne voice and writes his own material, his seven years of toil have managed to produce a pretty bland record. A couple of tracks are obvious attempts to replicate Robbie Williams' cheeky, pompy pop-rock: see 'Follow Me', which has the devil trying to tempt young David over the kind of knowing pop Williams did so well on 'Let Me Entertain You', or the overwrought theatrics of 'Neverland', which ironically contains the line "Why don't you try a new idea?"
The rest is mostly ballads very much in the style of his Number One 'Stop Living The Lie', although 'Time To Fall Down' is the standout by virtue of its vocal gymnastics and some stirring strings. It's not until closing track 'Long Time Coming' that Sneddon really escapes the overproduction that seems to be de rigueur for albums like this. Here though, the noodling guitars are reigned in and the constant attempts to make each chorus sound even more dramatic and painful than the last are put to one side. It's the best track on the album but, in another twist of irony, it's also the only one Sneddon hasn't had a hand in writing.
While he may feel that stating his credentials so forcefully will distinguish him from Robbie, Ronan, Will and Gareth, the truth is that most of 'Seven Years - Ten Weeks' could have been recorded by any of them. On this evidence, David Sneddon's seven years in the wilderness weren't spent trying to revolutionise pop. But then did you really expect anything else?
