Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: February 11, 2022
Production: Lionville
Album length: 51:08 min.
Genre: AOR revival / Melodic Rock
Rating: 8.0/10
After “Magic Is Alive” (RockLine review), which came out just a year and a half ago, the sixth studio album from AOR revivalists Lionville is already here. This is a mixed Italian-Swedish team-up, with guitarist Stefano Lionetti as the main visionary, chief songwriter and boss – the band’s name is derived from his surname – and on the other side Swedish vocalist Lars Säfsund of the excellent Swedish AOR outfit Work Of Art, who have apparently been sent off on a few years of hibernation, since we haven’t heard a peep from them in quite a while. With life as we knew it two years ago forced to a halt, and no gigs or tours, there’s simply more time left for writing new music.
Like it or not, this ‘phenomenon’ is more than useful for this kind of move. There’s far more time to focus on ideas and details, and the results, even when made relatively soon after the previous album, can keep up an extremely high level of quality, or even top it. Of course, the basic condition has to be met: you have to be a talented songwriter, or, in Lionville’s case, also know how to deftly rework and repackage the stuff that’s been with us in rock music for at least four decades. Yep. We’re talking about AOR revivalism, after all.
“Magic Is Alive” has thus gotten an equal successor in very short order, and the material on it keeps drawing inspiration from the ‘west coast’ bands that put AOR on the world map in the eighties: Survivor, Journey, and definitely Toto too (e.g. a track like The World Is On Fire),… and reshapes it all into a hugely convincing story of AOR recycling, slyly repackaged in the production and arrangements and served up by the standards of the new times. The album will surely (once again) please all the fans of Work Of Art – especially since the title track of the new Lionville album is stylistically akin to Lars’ home band.
The new album is too long by at least one song, if not two, which was to be expected. Take the cover of Richard Marx’s Arrow Through My Heart, for example? Even though this otherwise excellent cover fits the concept of the album’s whole look and Lionetti’s vision, and its integration is a real treat, since it sounds like just another original Lionetti song. Simply put, there’s little room to maneuver, and in terms of expression, everything has been said in the first three tracks. In past outings the band already hinted that it likes to push the rock point to the edge of the distinct pop-rock songwriting culture of the eighties, and the new album has a few such moments too. With a ballad that could have been swiped from Richard Marx and that speaks distinctly in the vein of eighties pop, namely Can’t Live Without You, you quickly draw that conclusion.
The album does have a few distinctly pompous, adrenaline-charged moments, such as the tracks Only The Brave and Angel Without Wings, in that order, in the second half of the album, with the aforementioned cover of Marx’s Arrow Through My Heart pouring more oil on that fire.
In short, Lionville aren’t discovering a musical revolution, but they do offer an excellent new continuation of an already established musical vocabulary, which gets more mature, more brilliantly arranged and more detailed from album to album. Especially compared to its predecessors “Magic Is Alive” and “World Of Fools” (2017).
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. This Time (4:26)
2. Cross My Heart (4:49)
3. The World Is On Fire (4:13)
4. Can’t Live Without Your Love (4:30)
5. True Believer (5:02)
6. We Are One (3:31)
7. Only The Brave (4:32)
8. Angel Without Wings (4:56)
9. I’ll Be Waiting Tonight (4:28)
10. Arrow Through My Heart (4:42)
11. So Close To Heaven (5:53)
Line-up:
Lars Säfsund – vocals, backing vocals
Stefano Lionetti – guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
Michele Cusato – guitar
Fabrizio Caria – piano, keyboards
Giulio Dagnino – bass guitar
Martino Malacrida – drums
