Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Overland
Label: Escape Music
Release: 2016
Running time: 52:36
Rating: 4/5
Two years after his excellent third studio album »Epic«, Steve Overland is back on the scene with a fourth one, which he’s titled »Contagious«. Same label, same »kitschy« cover art, so what? The style, of course, stays unchanged. So it’s no longer news that »Contagious« is tailor-made for every fan of AOR/melodic rock craft, the kind that’s typical, in its expressive quirks, of the British Isles. In other words, wherever you find Wildlife, FM, Shadowman or The Ladder project, Steve Overland and his solo studio outings are never far away.
So praise is pointless, the quality is a constant! »Contagious« keeps going down that clearly marked path of artistic brilliance, which the seasoned vocalist still follows faithfully, backed by a crew of proven names who helped him out in the studio. That’s how a genre that’s otherwise totally overlooked and forgotten these days keeps getting fantastic studio releases. Clearly, AOR is the voice of a generation. All the bands that have popped up in modern times, i.e. post-millennium, can certainly serve up hugely quality AOR records, as in the case of Australia’s White Widdow, but real top-shelf excellence still belongs to the torchbearers of the genre, the ones who popularized AOR in the eighties. We can easily put British FM in that camp too, fronted by the charismatic Overland, and of course all of his studio work.
This time around, Steve has surrounded himself with a completely different team of studio collaborators compared to »Epic«. He obviously wanted to make sure there was a noticeable difference between the two albums. Guitars and most of the keyboards are handled by the refined Swedish studio workaholic and »album« legionnaire Tommy Denander, who’s joined by another Swedish multi-instrumentalist, Lars Chriss (Lion’s Share). He’s best known as a guitarist, but on »Contagious« he played all the drums. Keyboards on two of the album’s tracks even come from Magnum’s illustrious keyboardist Mark Stanaway, while the bass lines are played start to finish by Tony Franklin, a man with serious musical mileage who has worked with the likes of Kate Bush, David Gilmour, Jimmy Page, Eros Ramazzotti, Vasco Rossi, Whitesnake,… This crew is a guarantee of perfection when it comes to getting the new album’s ideas realized.
Ultra-melodic, infectious, pompous! The chorus hooks are once again masterfully dressed up in multi-part vocal harmonies wrapped around Overland’s lead vocal. The album has terrific dynamics all the way through in the right mix of catchy melodies, punchy riffs and little masterpieces in the layering of harmonic guitar passages and solos in the »mid-eight« sections. So here’s another fantastic showing from Steve Overland, whose velvety voice keeps maturing over the years and only gets better at the finer points of vocal interpretation. This is a singer who hasn’t lost a speck of vocal range in all his years of career, and his singing keeps that attractive soulful charm and passionate delivery.
Eleven finely tuned tracks, with the extra Shame On You thrown in, run at a consistently even, that is high-quality, level of melodic rock and AOR expression. The album knows no arrangement or performance »stumbles«, and so it gratefully holds on to the best that the name Steve Overland can deliver. No need to mention that every FM diehard already has this album at home, as do all the other fans of pure British AOR, which flourished long, long ago through the eighties.
Lineup
Steve Overland – vocals
Tommy Denander – guitar, keyboards
Lars Chriss – drums
Tony Franklin – bass guitar
Mark Stanway – keyboards on tracks 1 and 9
Paul Farrington – keyboards on track 5
Jem Davis – Hammond organ on track 7
Production
Lars Chriss
Track list
1. Doctor My Heart
2. Easy On Me
3. Edge Of The Universe
4. Every Lonely Night
5. Wildest Dreams
6. Intoxicated
7. Define Our Love
8. Pocketful Of Dreams
9. Making Miracles
10. Back Where I Belong
11. Unforgiving World
12. Shame On You (bonus track)
