Artist: Heartland
Label: Escape Music
Release: 2007
Heartland have been around for 14 years, and “Mind Your Head” is their jubilee 10th studio album. Good lads, these Heartland guys. The band formed in 1993 on the ruins of FM and The Kick. Funnily enough, even today Heartland don’t have so much as an official website, so they live in the shadow of total anonymity, despite the top-notch AOR goodies they keep treating us to. It’s unbelievable how the whole AOR scene of the eighties has moved into a completely alternative rock movement, right down into the “underground”.
Two years ago we got to marvel at the superb “Move On” (2005), which was honestly one of the highlights of the 2005 season in AOR releases, and that’s on a global scale, of course. “Mind Your Head” is also a typical Heartland record. As always, it’s marked first and foremost by Chris Ousey’s distinctive vocal, just throaty enough, with an unmistakable soul touch à la his colleague Overland (FM), and wrapped, especially in the choruses, in layered vocal harmonies built from many “Ouseys” backing up Chris’s lead. For Heartland that’s routine and a well-known trademark of their musical perfection, and really the key ingredient of their sound, one that has pulled in followers who swear by their body of work.
Now, unlike “Move On”, the new album doesn’t have such grabby AOR choruses. On “Move On” they really “pulsed” at full blast from the very first listen, so effectively and simply did they crawl under your skin with their fluidity and pompous drama atmosphere, which sent shivers down your spine with ease. “Mind Your Head” doesn’t reach that level, but let’s not beat around the bush, it’s yet another excellent Heartland album. Morris’s riffs are explosively set up again, Ousey’s vocal, full of longing and melancholy, slots into them as perfectly as ever, and Morris has of course nicely seasoned the whole thing with the warmth of Hammond organs. Still, we run into the problem of repeating motifs while listening to the new material, and the biggest culprit is the very one-dimensional rhythmic variety of the individual songs. The vast majority of them race along at a breakneck tempo, cruising through the same gear (to caricature it, fourth to fifth). There’s only one ballad on the record, A Fathom I Feel, and it fails to break the feeling of repetitiveness. Still, that ballad once again proves how top-class the Heartland crew is, as it’s one of the album’s peaks, without a pinch of sugar, something the Brits can hardly hide, unlike their cousins across the pond. Anyway, as mentioned, I miss more dynamics in the riffs and motifs and in the rhythmic variety of the record.
The production is brilliant again. The instruments are evenly balanced and keep coexisting in a juicy equilibrium throughout the album’s running time, the soundscape is used to the max, and Ousey’s soulful, warm vocal naturally grabs most of the spotlight. The solos are masterfully woven into the instrumental parts once again, and Morris, with his touch of elegant guitar playing, uses them to build up the sense of drama in the songs and the overall expressiveness of Heartland’s musical pulse.
So. All you (still living today) connoisseurs of the British Isles AOR scene have probably already dug this album up in some online music shop. For everyone who doesn’t know where to file this band before getting into their music, let me throw out a few acts that sit close to them: Shadowman, The Ladder, The Kick, FM, Newman, Wildkard. Thanks to the warm embrace of the Hammond organs, the juicy vocal harmonies and, here and there, even the sound of distorted riffing and the guitar flourishes in the transitions, Heartland, judging by the overall energy they radiate, brush up lightly against the essence of today’s Uriah Heep. In short, “Mind Your Head” is a new classic Heartland album, again hugely good, and Heartland keep riding on at full tilt with it. But it’s also an album that, when you compare how polished its expression is, logically had to concede second place this time to its practically flawlessly sculpted older brother “Move On”(2005). Maybe “Mind Your Head” came out just a tad too soon after it.
Lineup
Chris Ousey – vocals, backing vocals
Steve Morris – guitar, bass guitar, keyboards
Fredrik Oscarsson – drums
Production
Steve Morris
Track list
01. Magazine
02. For Pity’s Sake
03. Frozen Hearted
04. Last Man To Fall
05. A Fathom I Fell
06. So The Story Goes
07. Mountain To Climb
08. A Richer Vein
09. Run For Your Life
10. Time To Believe
11. The Best Is Yet To Come
Album length: 48.38
