Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Overland
Label: Escape Music
Release: 2008
Length: 53.54
Rating: 4/5
Steve Overland is a legend of British melodic hard rock, probably even one of the biggest names on the scene. From the days of Wildlife and his partnership there with Simon Kirke (Free, Bad Company), to founding FM, one of the most recognizable and successful names in British AOR. In the new millennium the guy has been busy with the Shadowman project alongside Heartland guitarist Steve Morris, and their third album together is in the works. And let’s not forget the two The Ladder records either, where Steve and his crew served up some outstanding moments that smell of the best FM days and warmed the nostalgic hearts of AOR fans everywhere.
“Break Away” is Steve Overland through and through. It’s a completely personal solo studio achievement. On it, Steve shows remarkable musical maturity. Artistically, the album is exceptionally polished. The details of the individual musical collages are sharply highlighted by top-notch, crystal-clear production, where absolute harmony and balance reign. Polished to a full shine.
The album is still firmly melodic hard rock. It’s extremely sophisticated, meaning there’s no single instrument playing the dominant role. This time everything is subordinate to Steve’s vocals. His voice carries that trademark soul touch, which Steve uses freely here. He uses it to a degree, in fact, that we’re not used to hearing from him. The songs often flirt with pop rock artistry in the pre-choruses, and the transitional passages, say the outro of Alive And Kicking, as well as the transitions in the punchy This Time, which opens the album, or toward the end in Rescue Me, sound suspiciously prog rock. So when you add it all up and weigh it analytically, this album leans heavily toward what you could also call art rock. But the guitar, riff-sharpened yet pushed back to a sonic distance in the production and kept calm, doesn’t hide the album’s basic melodic hard rock principle.
Steve plays up his soul/improvisational talent sometimes so deeply that, with all the album’s sophistication and its subtly feeling approach, parallels come to mind with the perfection of hard-to-pin-down musical masters like Toto. Mainly because of the exceptional harmony between the soul vocals and the backing. This Overland sensitivity really sparkles especially in the excellence of Look Into Your Life, whose ballad leanings are ideal for expressing emotion, which Overland, with his rich knowledge and routine, masterfully exploits.. Of course the whole thing is further seasoned with layered, multi-part vocal harmonies, in line with the tradition of British melodic rock. Among the songs, Like A River deserves special mention as an example of the ideal symbiosis of those attributes. One of the most beautiful, more directly built melodic hard rock gems on the record is Heartache Calling.
It’s incredible how you can make an album of 12 songs that delivers melodic finish and perfection from start to finish. The basic motifs flow into one another in harmony throughout. This is an album of exceptional melodic compactness. It’s soaked in deep moods, often bordering on a characteristic dramatic atmosphere, but Steve’s soul phenomenon in his vocal delivery adds a mix of charm, warmth and even eroticism.
With “Break Away,” Steve Overland has found himself, more than ever before. He’s gathered a bunch of top-notch instrumentalists around him, and the result is an album Steve will have a hard time topping. Clearly the guy’s ideas, despite his remarkable workaholism, are still strongly inspired and fresh, and combined with the one-and-only Anders Rydholm, this time they’ve found a completely free path to shine in the best possible light. “Break Away” is a special album in Overland’s career. It doesn’t get more personal than this. It’s an album that sounds musically perfectly polished and at the same time incredibly genuine and natural. For everyone who doesn’t budge from the standards of perfect melody, and for audiophiles whose ears get pampered only with the gentlest balm. Seasoned, the way only the most experienced old tomcats can do it.
Lineup
Steve Overland – vocals
Anders Rydholm – guitar, keyboards, bass
Olaaf Trampe – guitar
Gregg Bissonette – drums
Tony Morra – drums on Evangeline and Lost In Paradise
Per Svensson – all backing vocals
Matt Bissonette – fretless bass on Until Forever Comes
Steve Newman – guitar on Heartache Calling
Production
Anders Rydholm
Track list
1. This Time
2. Alive And Kicking
3. Break Away
4. Like A River
5. Look Into Your Eyes
6. After The Fire
7. Evangeline
8. Heartache Calling
9. Mad Mad World
10. Lost In Paradise
11. Rescue Me
12. Until Forever Comes
