A "name" band will always attract attention.
Canadian band
Harlequin may not have been world beaters, but they were contenders.
The band's first three studio albums,
'Victim Of A Song', '
Love Crimes' and '
One False Move', released 1979 through 1982 created enough waves among
AOR aficionados to render them minor legends at the very least.
After last year's somewhat anaemic false restart, '
Harlequin 2', the band is back, firing on all cylinders with
'Waking The Jester'.
This new version of
Harlequin has been assembled around original vocalist, George Belanger, As history tells us, it is almost invariably the singer's voice that gives a band its identity, and very clearly, that's the way it is with
Harlequin.
There's much more substance and solidity to the music now. The light-as-cake-frosting
AOR of
'One False Move' and others has been usurped, replaced with a grittier, post grunge hard rock. There's an undeniable heaviness to songs like '
Inbound Train'.
That's not to say that the songs lack hooks that make the pulse quicken - listen to
'Rise' and
'Take It Or Leave It' - or that they lack the sensual drive and urgency which is at the heart of all great melodic rock - Try
'Hell Or High Water' or '
Black Out The Sun'.
Elsewhere, there's a soulful, bluesy feel running through '
In Your Car' and '
This Limbo'. It's all been done before of course, but
Harlequin inject new life into this familiar material, buffing it up with slick production touches so that it comes up sparklingly fresh.
When you add
'Little White Lies' been-round-the-block-a-few-times intimacy and urbanity of tone to '
You Can't Go Back's resonating piano, well chosen chords and sharply observational lyric, it just reinforces the fact that the band have been around for a decade or three.
All in all, it's a clever new spin on a classic genre. A reconstruction aimed at a baby boomer audience who yearn for the best of the past, but who've been conditioned by contemporary rock.
It just might work.
Written by
Brian Thursday, September 27, 2007
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