Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Find Me
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2013
Length: 56:03
Rating: 3.5/5
Daniel Flores is a Swedish workaholic: drummer, composer, producer and whatnot, known among other things as a member of the excellent progressive metallers Mind’s Eye. He joined forces with vocalist Robbie LaBlanc (Blanc Faces) in a Swedish-American AOR team-up, and that’s how the Find Me project was born. Playing the card of re-creating the primal AOR sentiment of the eighties in melodic rock, it comes knocking on the hearts of the nostalgics.
The material started taking shape back in 2011. Over the years Flores has developed a really good feel for putting a song’s melodic lesson front and center, the kind that »sticks« to your ears instantly. But if you want an album that works from head to toe and pays off in full on a market saturated with a plethora of AOR/melodic rock revivalists, where there’s nothing left to say (in terms of an original musical revolution) because it’s all been known for ages, then you have to realize you’re walking into a particular kind of gamble. That gamble goes something like this: »How well will my songs deliver the full-blooded punch of verse – (pre-chorus) – chorus?« In other words, will a given song, combined with polished production, succeed in buying the emotions of those music lovers who left their hearts in the eighties, or not? And if it does succeed, how successfully?
Flores also knows full well he can’t pull this off alone, even though he’s a multi-instrumentalist and has no secrets in the studio. Sweden is full of excellent »imitators« who are famed for their exquisite brilliance whenever they need to get their playing within an inch of the energy and form of the original. So helping him hone the ideas into their final, infectious, songwriterly shape were Sören Kronqvist (Crash the System, Sunstorm), Erik Mårtensson (Eclipse, W.E.T., Jimi Jamison), the equally seasoned Italian bassist Alessandro Del Vecchio (Hardline), as well as Tom and James Martin (Vega, Sunstorm). Singer Issa and Mikey Wilson chipped in too.
And so the Find Me project’s debut “Wings of Love” was born. Let’s call it material that Robbie LeBlanc sank his teeth into with his excellent vocal delivery, breathing into the songs much-needed contrast and color with an effectively built wave of theatrical drama, with the expected (fully igniting) atmospheric crescendo in the chorus melodies, bursting at the seams with bombast and pomp, just as the best moments of AOR music demand. In the end, that goal was optimized this way on only half the album’s songs, but still.
The crew is experienced. Remember the recent boom around the Australian AOR band White Widdow? In terms of sound, production and songwriting, Find Me could be placed close to the Aussies. Also because of how Robbie’s vocals fit in that kind of musical setting. But with some reservations. Find Me is first and foremost a project where tracks get »patched together« through email and »sharing« mp3 files. White Widdow is a band that breathes in sync, calibrated to a single wavelength. When they record, everyone’s in the studio.
The dialogue between riffs and retro AOR keyboard synths is fully effective, and the solo seasoning in the instrumental parts right before the final chorus repeat is tastefully and cunningly chosen, so it does a first-rate job of livening up the songs. Still, the album loses points, because despite the pursuit of melodic and sonic perfection it mostly sounds like something we’ve already heard. Maybe it feels that way simply because lately we’ve been witnessing a veritable flood of similar genre releases like »Wings Of Love«. The album gets strong in the second half. The first track that grabs your full attention is only the sixth, titled On the Outside, where Flores and crew pull off a particularly effective combination of verse, pre-chorus and chorus. That track keeps climbing atmospherically, so the mix of melodic boom in the chorus and dramatic pomp works at its best. One Soul and Powerless achieve similar effects, then there’s the »rhythmically Hysteria-esque« (oh, how predictable) Unbreakable, which also ignites more noticeably on the album, and the excellent title track, where you simply can’t get more eighties than what the composition offers, and right at the tail end of the album the above-average, fiery Your Lips. What can we conclude? An average first half and a very good run from the sixth track on. That also means two tracks are definitely surplus on the album.
»Wings Of Love« is a nice album. Typically Scandinavian AOR/melodic rock production that will make every AOR fanatic prick up their ears. Excellently produced, two songs too long, but all in all a very nice and solid product its makers can rightly be proud of. It won’t cause any earthquakes, but it’ll make plenty of die-hard AOR fanatics happy, the kind who can’t wait to download it from iTunes or Amazon. In short: nice, but nothing special. At least not anymore in 2013.
Lineup
Robbie LaBlanc – vocals
Daniel Flores – drums, keyboards
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Daniel Palmqvist (Xorigin) – guitar
Johnny Trobro – bass guitar, “fretless” bass
Production
Daniel Flores
Track list
1. Road To Nowhere
2. Another World
3. Dancing To A Broken Heartbeat
4. Eternally
5. Firefight
6. On The Outside
7. One Soul
8. Powerless
9. Bottom Of My Heart
10. Unbreakable
11. Wings Of Love
12. Your Lips
