Artist: Hitchcock, Toby
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2011
Runtime: 54:55
Rating: 3.5/5
Toby Hitchcock is one more name in the league of vocalists with superbly gritty voices and serious stature. Of the younger generation. He first got real attention in Pride Of Lions, the band founded and led by ex-Survivor mastermind Jim Peterik.
Being at an age where you’re hungry to prove yourself, to perform, to express yourself creatively through music, and yet depending on others to keep the project and/or band you’re part of moving, can be a pretty lousy spot to be in. Of course, the folks at Frontiers Records are well aware of Toby’s huge vocal talent, so they made an interesting move and brought Hitchcock together with Swedish multi-instrumental wizard and producer Erik Martensson, a member of the Swedish AOR outfit Eclipse. Martensson, for instance, is largely responsible for the debut of the American-Swedish melodic rock team-up W.E.T., with Jeff Scott Soto on vocals, which dropped a highly praised studio debut last year.
Sweden has no shortage of musical miracle workers. When it comes to transcribing the essentials of the AOR tradition, they keep proving they can do it with their left pinky. One of those all-round guys, like Martensson (guitar shredder, bassist, keyboardist, drummer, arranger and producer all in one), is Magnus Karlsson, for example, who wrote the entire latest album for Magnum singer Bob Catley and for The Sweet singer Tony O’Hora, contributes heavily to every album of the Allen/Lande project, and on top of that plays in a band that has nothing to do with melodic rock. The German power metal usurpers Primal Fear.
Back to “Mercury’s Down”. Wherever the melody and energy of Survivor, Pride Of Lions, and the solo work of Jim Peterik or Jimi Jamison live, that’s also where the inspiration for “Mercury’s Down” lives. So Martensson built the whole framework. He laid out the tracks. From the guitar phrases, which he carefully dressed up in the arrangements and contrasted juicily with keyboards that, of course, bring the energy of the eighties back to life. Martensson is a genius. In a short time he managed to put together song foundations that are dynamic enough in their arrangements, and the album doesn’t suffer from the cloned-motif syndrome. The whole thing works as if Frontiers Records had literally ordered it from Martensson.
Hitchcock, whose state of mind is described in the second paragraph of this review, threw himself into the material with all the drive and a definite surplus of testosterone. This time, things stand or fall on Hitchcock! He’s the needle on the scale that decides which way the songs tip. Both in energy and in style. West coast AOR playbook, Survivor! You can’t miss the approach Toby soaked up in Peterik’s lessons. And where Survivor is close, Journey is only a shade further away (Just Say Goodbye has a chorus that dangerously veers toward Don’t Stop Believin’). A track like Strong Enough revives the Survivor energy so shamelessly and openly it’s almost rude. But that’s all logical, given the background Hitchcock comes from. The details are interesting. Take Let Go, the song on this album that boasts especially superb Martensson arrangements (a masterful interplay between guitars and keyboards with a strong dramatic, theatrical moment), the best use of a tight, well-defined pairing, and a compact verse-chorus relationship. Combined with a different type of vocalist, it could have been steered into a completely different energetic direction, but here’s Toby Hitchcock, who with his half of the equation once again brings the west coast AOR playbook flintily back to life. So the album really sounds half American and half Scandinavian.
Tear Down The Barricades stands out on the album. This is where Scandinavian-school melodic hard rock really throws sparks, drawing inspiration from the Rainbow pioneers. The lead guitar phrase can’t hide it in any way. The melodic purism of strictly classic foundations is stressed even by the melodic single-string picking over individual guitar phrases, which is a heavy metal rule, but a hugely welcome bit of variety on “Mercury’s Down”. What’s incredible, though, is the sheer expressive power of Hitchcock’s figure, since in the chorus he steers the track right back into “west coast” territory. The title track, which closes the album, repeats that energy and approach. A Different Drum is a song that sums up the two different approaches on this album from the Martensson – Hitchcock pairing, with excellent chemistry, keeping the most Euro flavor and, as a result, the typical Scandi hard rock seasoning.
An album like this isn’t without its minuses, though. The first is that it’s an artificially created collaboration between two musicians who communicated mostly through e-mails and by sending mp3 sketches while making the album. That’s why the album lacks a fully developed sense of dynamics and a more tangible flow of moods, even though Hitchcock is extremely focused in his work, and he “kills” every last doubter with his brilliant know-how at the latest in the punchy, melodramatic half-ballad One Day I’ll Stop Loving You, which also shows off the singer’s chanson-like power. The work of two people is naturally limited in variety, especially when you’re locked into AOR molds. Without the feeling that there’s a band on the album, it’s hard to reach the optimum of convincing impact from the energy captured on the recording. That’s where the minus comes into play, with Martensson’s involvement feeling more like a well-paid commission from Frontiers Records than anything else. Of course, this is first and foremost Toby Hitchcock’s debut, which isn’t necessarily for the best. The man is so hungry to prove himself that at times his vocals overfill the available space in the songs almost excessively. So he often “runs over” the guitar ornaments, even the outro solos in the songs. That’s why this, while a very high-quality product worth tasting at every turn, is a somewhat harder album to digest, a notch more demanding to listen to, and it’s harder to catch fire on the first spin.
However I turn it, “Mercury’s Down” is a really lovely piece of work. It’ll be interesting to anyone who’s fired up by the west coast AOR playbook. Of course, this sentence reads as if AOR were in the focus of the masses and written in 1987, but it’s meant for at least that handful of survivors today who hold this music dear. “Mercury’s Dawn” won’t leave you indifferent either. And Toby will supposedly be busier soon, since, according to Frontiers Records’ announcements, his employer Jim Peterik is set to return to the scene next year with a new Pride Of Lions record. In the meantime, you can kill time effectively with “Mercury’s Down”.
Lineup
Toby Hitchock – vocals
Erik Martensson – all instruments
Production
Erik Martensson
Tracklist
1. This Is The Moment
2. Strong Enough
3. How To Stop
4. Let Go
5. One Day I’ll Stop Loving You
6. I Should Have Said
7. If It’s To Be (It’s Up To Me)
8. Just Say Goodbye
9. Summer Nights In Cabo
10. Tear Down The Barricades
11. A Different Drum
12. Mercury’s Down
