Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Boulevard
Label: Metal Mind Productions
Release: 1990
Length: 46:06
Rating: 4.5/5
In 2010, “Into The Street” by the Canadian AOR outfit Boulevard got a remastered reissue via Metal Mind Production. With a few similar moves in the past, the label has proven that looking after “impressive” rock works of bygone decades is nothing new to it.
Originally released in 1990, “Into The Street” is the logical follow-up to the band’s 1988 studio debut “BLVD”. After that self-titled first record under the name BLVD, the band renamed themselves Boulevard for the release of “Into The Street”. Even on the debut, Boulevard showed a great feel for the noble blend of melodic compactness and a highly vibrant atmosphere that casts a spell on the listener from the very first spin. We’re in 1988, after all, and AOR was hitting the peak of its heyday. “BLVD” alone gave the band four singles and two music videos, and they got a great chance to make a name for themselves, especially in Canada, by touring with Glass Tiger.
The band tried to build on that success and break through the ice that separated them from commercial success. “Into The Street” has some truly flawless moments, not just for the band but for the whole AOR genre. This is an album where the pure-blooded AOR “firestarters” just offer themselves up. From the opening Talk to Me to the closing Eye To Eye, the record holds up a superior set of polished “AOResques”, the kind that very few AOR bands managed to hammer together during the genre’s boom. AOR was still strong back then. Releases like the debut by Signal, “Loud And Clear” (1989), the self-titled 1989 album by Diving for Pearls, Nelson’s “After The Rain” (1990), or “Surveillance” (1989), the peak of classic rockers Triumph’s AOR phase, are outstanding achievements of the genre. And “Into The Street” belongs in that league.
The songs ignite through a graduated build-up and swelling of atmosphere. Through the verse, then an excellent connecting bridge between verse and chorus that carries the song to its atmospheric peak in the chorus. And there’s no wavering between them. The songs are polished to perfection.
The electric guitar is delicately “sunk” into the mix and backed in the production by a blanket of acoustic ones, which in places firmly reinforces the pop contours of the album’s tracks. The building blocks of the sound are balanced in perfect symbiosis, with no element superior or inferior to the others. The vocals are optimally dressed in magical harmonic melodies that work with a “crescendo” in classic chorus hooks. All of this gave the band no small headache when picking, from a heap of songs, the ones that would go out as singles and bring them the commercial breakthrough they were after.
Lead Me On, Crazy Life and Need You Tonight were chosen as the album’s “single” releases. Where Is The Love, Eye Of A Hurricane, Rainy Day in London or Where Are you Now would have slotted into the single spots without any trouble, the latter with a fascinatingly erotogenic, you could even say sensual, integration of sax. Simple as that. There isn’t a bad song on the album, the variety of lead motifs is clearly defined, and the songs carry a polished charisma and the character of a complete entity. “Into The Street” is a monument to a short-lived band that showed up on the rock map at the zenith of AOR’s heyday, right before the whole genre went under. It sounds timeless, doesn’t age, doesn’t lose its freshness, and above all impresses with the musicians’ refined feel for arranging within the compositions, squeezing out the optimal combination of melodic compactness and the mood-stirring excitability of the atmospheres they capture.
If you’re one of the handful of surviving die-hard AOR devotees, and you’re hunting for the finest AOR album ever released on Canadian soil, your search will undoubtedly stop at Boulevard’s second record, “Into the Street”. Okay, not necessarily, but quite likely your search will even end right here. Even looking back over more than twenty years that have spun by in the blink of an eye since its release, the album works in the new millennium like a little musical gem that has passed the test of time and still shines intensely among AOR releases today. Sadly, this album failed to get the band out of its rut. The lineup started to crumble soon after “Into The Street” came out, and in 1991 Boulevard quietly vanished from the rock map for good, coinciding with the decline of the AOR genre.
Line-up
David Forbes – vocals
Randy Gould – guitar
Mark Holden – saxophone
Andrew Johns – keyboards
Tom Christiansen – bass
Randall Stoll – drums
Production
John Punter
Track list
1. Talk To Me
2. Where Is The Love
3. Lead Me On
4. Eye Of The Hurricane
5. Light Of Day
6. Crazy Life
7. Rainy Day In London
8. Where Are You Now
9. Need You Tonight
10. Eye To Eye
