Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: White Widdow
Label: AOR Heaven Records
Release: 2014
Length: 42:17
Rating: 4.5/5
Australia’s White Widdow are one of the nicest and most positive surprises when it comes to AOR revival bands anywhere on the planet! This is a crew of seriously seasoned musicians who’ve played in all sorts of bands over their careers. The guys dropped two excellent studio albums in 2010 and 2011, and then fans had to wait three years for the third one.
White Widdow recorded the new album »Crossfire« once again at York St Studios in south Melbourne. This past summer they welcomed a new drummer, Noel Tenny, who replaced the late George Kristy, and the lineup also features a new bassist, Ben Webster. Both jumped right into writing the new material and recording the album. The band has been through a pretty turbulent stretch over the last three years, and that may well be why the album took longer to arrive than anyone expected.
»Crossfire« picks up the story of its two predecessors, »White Widdow« (2010) and »Serenade« (2011), and keeps all the sonic and songwriting greatness embodied by those older studio siblings. »Crossfire« comes with an even more detailed production, especially in how it paints the sound with lower tones that grip the framework of that infectious rhythmic drive even harder, and on top of it sprawls a fresh swarm of poisonously catchy melodies that hook you the instant you hit play! Besides an irreversible love for the golden days of AOR, White Widdow have an incredibly fine-tuned sense for building a hooky vocal line and a tight, compact form within a given song. The core is a grabby riff, set in the chord progression so that the crew can unfold the melodic optimum in the phrase. And we’re talking about the melodic optimum the AOR genre demands. When it comes to the creative nucleus of White Widdow’s songs, everything is crystal clear. The building blocks of the picture are perfectly arranged. The contrast between the riff and the pulsing snare cracks is tied together by the remarkable warmth of the bass, and all of it is wrapped in waves of that classic synth contour lifted straight from the golden eighties (Greg Giuffria would lick every finger on both hands!!!). Vocalist Jules Millis is the needle on the scale: the color of his voice settles into the production unbelievably well. Not some mind-blowingly trained vocal, almost mildly nasal even, but it carries just the right tone and that surge of emotion the AOR sound White Widdow »court« calls for.
The contrasts are outstanding and the vibes are damn effective and gloriously arrogant. The band adds vocal harmonies with a great deal of finesse, building vocal »sub-melodies« that complement Millis’s main vocal lines, which brings serious pomp to the songs. So »Crossfire« is the perfect continuation of the previous two albums and a beautifully chosen new chapter in the White Widdow story. The mid-eight passages make room for solo escapades, where the masterpieces of the superb Enzo reign, and he poured the guitar work of his career into them. The guy clearly listened to a lot of Eddie Van Halen and George Lynch back in the day.
If you’re a nostalgic for the story of the rich AOR scene of the eighties, »Crossfire« will catapult you irreversibly into a unique world of the distant past. From the bombastic, ultra-melodic, contagious title track right at the start of the album all the way to the closer Never Again, it’ll get you so worked up you’ll barely be able to wait to hit »play« again on your CD player. Picking favorites on this one is entirely up to you. The songs are melodically detailed and chosen to perfection, and they hold the listener in an intoxicating daze of highly vibrant moods! No band in recent times that wears the AOR revivalism badge has sounded this authentically close to the eighties for a long time, not like Australia’s White Widdow.
AOR revivalism has never sounded so sinfully sweet and so close to the spirit of the eighties. The perfect package of AOR brilliance inherited from the best the eighties had to offer, served up for a new era! Perfection!
Lineup
Jules Millis – vocals
Enzo Almanzi – guitar
Xavier Millis – keyboards
Ben Webster – bass
Noel Tenny – drums
Production
Xavier Millis & Pelle Saether
Tracklist
1. Caught In The Crossfire
2. Fly Me Away
3. Just Another Night
4. Below The Belt
5. Dream’s Don’t Die
6. Too Many Tears
7. Angel
8. Born To Be A Rebel
9. Carry The Heartache
10. Never Again
