Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: December 4, 2020
Production: Unruly Child
Album length: 52.05 min
Genre: Art Rock
Rating: 8.5/10
Unruly Child are a band that fans of melodic rock, and of rock that likes to experiment and hunt for detours into musical unconventionality (I’m thinking mostly of the eighties stories of bands that reinvented themselves to adapt, like Yes, and of the World Trade project too), sooner or later run into. You might also draw comparisons with projects that grew out of the “John Payne era” of Asia, like GPS or the current Dukes of the Orient, among others.
The band put out their ambitious self-titled debut back in 1992. Its first character was hard rock, but a bit later it steered into more AOR waters. Later still, Unruly Child started reaching more and more for adventures that also flirted with progressive rock. That’s why their albums, which have been a relative constant only since 2010, are easiest to pin down as art rock. They can sound shamelessly close to pop, or surprise you with almost prog-rock moves you never saw coming, and of course everything in between. What they can’t do is deny their AOR-tinted DNA.
Unruly Child had rotten luck just when they could have become a bigger name. The eyes and ears of the world were turned toward grunge at the time, so Unruly Child fell apart after their debut. At the turn of the new millennium they did release two albums, only to go dormant again. Then, shortly before 2010, they finally reformed and, in their more mature years, consolidated with regular albums, but by then the time for glory had long since passed. So to this day the band has stayed unfairly overlooked, and really only the more curious music fans know them. The pairing of two exceptional musicians, guitarist Bruce Gowdy (also in Stone Fury, World Trade) and keyboardist Guy Allison (also in Lodgic, World Trade, Doobie Brothers), stays rock-solid on this album too, and as long as those two keep working together, there’s no fear that anything bad will ever happen to Unruly Child. Add another member who worked with World Trade, drummer Jay Schellen, plus the extraordinary singer Marcie Free, who sang with King Cobra and Signal in the eighties, and any further doubt is completely pointless. Four members of the original Unruly Child have been back together for the last ten years. No wonder, given their outstanding musical pedigrees, that these musicians are also tied to the names Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple), Bobby Kimball (Toto), Doobie Brothers, Boz Scaggs, Air Supply and The Moody Blues, and that the phenomenal Tony Franklin (The Firm, Blue Murder, Kenny Wayne Sheppard, Kate Bush, Whitesnake …) stepped in to play bass on the album “Our Glass Hour”.
Unruly Child are, and definitely remain, a story all their own, while also being an interesting blend of the bands their members played in before (World Trade, Signal). Those connections are there on the new album “Our Glass House” too. But “Our Glass House” is a touch more experimental than last year’s predecessor “Blue Blue World”, which won’t surprise anyone who knows the band. It goes into the ears a little slower, but once it grabs you (and it really grabs you), it doesn’t want to leave your player for a good while. The songs are longer too, since with Unruly Child we’re nowhere near AOR purism, so on an art rock album like this, the choruses in “Freedom is a Fight” and “Underwater” are the standout moments for those of you craving heftier AOR maneuvers. The basic starting point, of course, remains a high level of musicality and tight, compact songwriting. As they play through the material, Gowdy and Allison serve up a pile of interesting moves and solutions. The interplay between them, with all those added filigree tricks that entertain and thrill in equal measure, adds that eclectic one-of-a-kind quality that really puts Unruly Child in a league of their own as musical artisans. As usual, the band gives the lead vocal extra vocal harmonies, once again backed up with a vocoder.
All in all, “Our Glass House” is an excellent new studio album from seasoned musicians, special in every way and in every way a proper Unruly Child album. It’s an album of constant searching for the perfect coexistence of the building blocks of the sound, and for the balance between high musical accessibility and art rock excursions that tickle in all the right places. Exactly what you’d expect from Gowdy and Allison.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Poison Ivy
2. Say What You Want
3. Our Glass House
4. Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead
5. Talked You Out Of Loving Me
6. Underwater
7. Catch Up To Yesterday
8. Freedom Is A Fight
9. The Wooden Monster
10. Here To Stay
Line-up:
Marcie Free – vocals
Bruce Gowdy – guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
Guy Allison – keyboards, percussion, backing vocals
Tony Franklin – bass guitar
Jay Schellen – drums
Drži, da gre pri Marcie Free za izvenserijski vokal, a ni pevec. Do zgodnjih devetdesetih je bil res pevec po imenu Mark Free, odtlej pa gre za pevko Marcie. 🙂
Tnx. To sem vedel tudi sam, a nisem hotel obešati na “veliki zvon” – se mi zdi dost osebna zadeva, pa potem ne maram takih reči preveč vmešavat v članke – je pa sicer to ena večjih zanimivosti, tako da super da si dodal – sam sem o tem razmišljal: “Dodati ali ne dodati?” 😀