Artist: House Of Lords
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2009
Running time: 52:35
Rating: 4/5
House Of Lords are back today in a lineup where, on the member list, only the name of singer James Christian really stands out. Forget the golden days of the late eighties and early nineties, when House Of Lords reaped their biggest successes in melodic hard rock. The band’s last three albums of the new millennium prove that James Christian has creative steam to burn. You definitely miss the Christian and Gregg Giuffria tandem (Giuffria basically founded House Of Lords), but the new material holds up against even the most doubting of Thomases. Especially given that Christian’s buddy Mark Baker joined in on writing the material for “Carthesian Dreams”. Baker last co-created material with House Of Lords for their spectacular 1992 album “Demons Down”.
On “Cartesian Dreams” too, we’re dealing with that typically pompous element that marks the highly melodic catchiness of House Of Lords songs. Their trademark. The pomp peaks once again in the melodically polished choruses, where Christian’s vocal is once more armed to the teeth, hair-splittingly so, with layered vocal harmonies that fan the album’s individual moods in a thoroughly tried-and-tested way!
The album’s opening stretch, with the title track, then Born To Be Your Baby and Desert Rain, is tremendously strong and convincing all round, and it grabs any melodic hard rock lover in an instant. That goes for all the old fans of the band, and for those of you who today have a soft spot for the Scandinavian boom in melodic hard rock revivalism, with bands like Leverage or Brother’s Firetribe.
Next comes the least interesting moment of the album. That’s the ballad Sweet September, which quickly sinks into oblivion once Bangin’ pours oil on the fire. That one could have replaced the title track in the opening slot without any trouble. A Simple Plan, for example, is written in melodic verse fragments that would suit the legendary singer Joe Lynn Turner too, and with his raspy timbre and approach, Christian reminds you of Turner in it, too. The chorus even fleetingly sketches out the Rainbow AOR days with Street Of Dreams. In The Bigger They Came, with its galloping riffs (under a different production, those could pass for Iron Maiden’s The Trooper), that feeling comes back again, and the mild parallel with the late-period Rainbow legacy still makes sense. The resemblance, if you pick up on it, is of course purely coincidental, and the record doesn’t lose any of the melodic, emotional charge of House Of Lords’ one-of-a-kind perfection at stacking up songs.
In Never Look Back, the tightly synced interplay of keyboards and guitar riff sounds great, lifting the album’s dynamics again and shifting the mood itself. The way the song is put together, with its witty basic motifs, from the transitional ones to the lead ones, makes it the album’s strongest moment and the peak of today’s sermon of melodic hard rock along the rails of the House Of Lords legacy. Perfect melodic perfection in every element of the song, where the biggest charm once again comes from the one and only James Christian with his unmistakable singing, is the strongest moment on “Cartesian Dreams”.
Besides Never Look Back, another new melodic high point of the album is captured in the chorus of Repo Man. So “Cartesian Dreams” doesn’t let up atmospherically either, with lively dynamics and rolling waves of mood across its whole running time. No question about it. House Of Lords have once again squeezed out the best they can squeeze out today. Saved By Rock will delight fans of early Danger Danger. It’s a tribute to the creators of the rock world, starting with Hendrix, etc… Joanna, luckily, has nothing to do with Eddie Grant, and it’s not a ballad either (thank God!). Instead, House Of Lords lay down another electrified rock song with an infectious AOR chorus of chiseled, layered vocal harmonies that accompany the superior melody of Christian’s lead vocal. Of course House Of Lords masterfully saved such an intense song for a strong finish to the album.
“Cartesian Dreams” continues the story of its excellent predecessor “Come To My Kingdom“, which, in atmospheric and melodic terms, was a step up from “World Upside Down” from 2006. And that’s where the one stumbling block lies . “Cartesian Dreams” is awfully similar to its predecessor and would stir up the same feelings on listening if it had come out right after “World Upside Down”. Sadly, then, it brings no special novelties or clever tricks that could still surprise a connoisseur of this band. Nor is there enough of a deviation (which the “limited” range of motion in melodic hard rock does allow) to feel any real difference between “Come To My Kingdom” and the new album. Usually in cases like this, when you don’t have a whole lot of room to maneuver expressively, you bail yourself out with changes to the production. But the production stays exactly the same on the new House Of Lords album too. On one hand that’s a good thing, because we really don’t need a new experimental album cut from the same cloth as “The Power And The Myth” (2004). So it’s better that James Christian keeps his crew in the waters he knows best and tames like no one else. “Cartesian Dreams” is still an excellent album all round, the kind that, in their current form, only House Of Lords can deliver.
Lineup
James Christian – vocals
Jeff Kent- bass guitar, keyboards
Jimi Bell – guitar
B.J Zampa – drums
GUEST MUSICIAN:
Tommy Denander – guitar
Track list
1. Cartesian Dreams
2. Born To Be Your Baby
3. Desert Rain
4. Sweet September
5. Bangin’
6. A Simple Plan
7. Never Look Back
8. The Bigger They Come
9. Repo Man
10. Saved By Rock
11. Joanna
12. The Train*
*…bonus track
