It's eleven years since the 'comeback' release, '
Building The Perfect Bridge', an album so anodyne, so anaemic that fans were rushing in with arena size defibrillators in the forlorn hope of resuscitating a once great stadium rock band.
Well out of Intensive Care now,
REO Speedwagon have found that for seventies/eighties bands with the nous, the talent and the sheer damn determination there's life after post grunge.
Given their longevity, some mellowing is inevitable, but this is punchy, frequently hard hitting material that only occasionally leans back and chills out, and even then it swaggers and swirls -
'Born To Love You', written by Bruce Hall, is a great two hander (and two parter) with Hall swapping vocals with Kevin Cronin.
The first two tracks, '
Smilin In The End' and the immense '
Find Your Own Way Home' are performed with such gloriously tentative energy that I want what these guys are drinking. Third track,
'I Needed To Fall' is gloriously reminiscent of the band's most hypnotic chart busting balladic moments,
Three great openers, structurally deceptively simple and evidence indeed that not only have REOS spent a lifetime learning and honing their craft, but that here still is a band with fire in its belly.
Joe Vanelli's production is full and fittingly lush where appropriate, but wisely thins the gloss in the places that the eighties would have dictated it be troweled on thick.
As ever, Cronin taps into our subconscious. Fears, hopes and everyday social dynamics are exposed and examined. Unsurprisingly there are more questions than answers, but today, philosophy replaces the sentimentality of the past.
Elsewhere, the boogie rhythms of the bouncy
'Lost On The Road Of Love' and the breezy (and Billy Joel like) '
Run Away Baby' provide breadth and depth, picking up on the confident rhythms of '
Hi Infidelity' without attempting to recycle yesterday's music.
Closer '
Let My Love Find You' is suitably soft rock and soft centered, and we can forgive Cronin his sentimental moment . . . in three decades of melodic rock, nobody does it better.
Written by
Brian Sunday, July 1, 2007
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