Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: 12. 7. 2024
Production: Jay Ruston & Mr. Big
Album length: 46.16 min.
Genre: Hard Rock
Rating: 8.5/10
It’s no big news anymore that Mr. Big have been saying goodbye to the music scene for quite a while now. But judging by the musical substance of their latest, which the band insists is definitely their last, the round tenth one, called “Ten”, you can tell the quartet’s tank still has plenty of high-octane fuel left.
If “Ten” really is the last Mr. Big album, the crew is definitely bowing out in style. Striking the right pose, doing it the right way. The way it should be done. And yet. Eric Martin, whose vocals don’t hit dizzying heights these days, but whose voice at the same time shows he’s aging like a good old wine, says the band might still play the odd boutique show down the road. In front of a select crowd. And maybe more. When he was pressed on whether it’s really all over in the studio too, he explained that everybody had an insane amount of fun recording “Ten” and that ideas just kept popping up on their own: “Oh… we could add this and that here…” So the old saying applies: “Never say never.”
We’ll see. The band also plans to put out a live album this year from their latest tour, called Big Finish. They visited Ljubljana with it for the second time this April. The recording comes from Japan’s Budokan, which, given how insanely popular the band is in the land of the rising sun, is the only honest way for Mr. Big to make it up to their loyal Japanese fans.
In short: “Ten” overflows with good, virtuous energy. It’s a great mix of blues and rock phrasing that only underlines Paul Gilbert’s proverbial childlike playfulness in the studio. And above it all? All that primal, raw energy, held together and rounded off by the production itself, handled by the seasoned Jay Ruston, which simply has to be there if you want to talk about a true rock and roll character at all. And Mr. Big know that damn well. Nothing gets past these brilliant musicians.
The goods? Opener Good Luck Trying is an exact summary of the paragraph above, drawing virtuous inspiration from the legacy of rock and roll at the turn of the sixties into the seventies. The very next track, I Am You, steeped in acoustics, discharges the voltage-charged opening of the album with a finely laid (highly musical) dialogue between verse and chorus. A veil of melancholic yearning gets added – Martin sings beautifully, and nobody can take his ‘soul’ charisma away from him. Someone like Jon Bon Jovi should hear this track – a little education never hurts, and it might even lift some move in Bon Jovi’s modern era to tangible expressive credibility (As Good As It Gets joins this association later on the album). Right Outta Here is an escape into the expanses of mocking tomfoolery, though Gilbert’s ‘orientally winding’ transitional flourish adds a hint of darkness. Even though times have changed, “Ten” breathes that sensibility of chasing a way onto the charts of the late eighties (I’m thinking of the single Green Tinted Sixties Mind), which is no surprise. The choruses of Sunday Morning Kinda Girl, and right after it the sensual ballad Who We Are, would quickly back that up. What Were You Thinking is a cunning rock’n’roller that owes some thanks for its inspiration to Chuck Berry too. And Up On You is the definitive Mr. Big single of “Ten”, compositionally a great reflection of the band’s good old days and its evolutionary maturing all the way to the present. A gleaming rocker that pulses and grabs with an incredible ‘groove’!
Mr. Big are, what can you even say – in terms of performance, ‘intriguing’ once again. Going by the names, they could have served up a venomous jazz-rock fusion album, but that’s not what they’re after. And yet… When you throw the record on the player, you can’t escape the realization that this is an album of heaping fun in the studio, where the brilliance of Sheehan, Gilbert and drum master Nick D’Virgilio (Genesis, Tears For Fears, Big Big Train, Spock’s Beard, among others) keeps the listener constantly on their toes, because devilish virtuoso tightrope-walking, despite the compactness of the songs, lies in wait for the consumer at almost every turn. None of this is any new discovery about Mr. Big. But D’Virgilio surely brought extra freshness to the album. Nick is also a multi-instrumentalist, a great vocalist, and when needed a skilled arranger and songwriter. In short, in this respect too it would be a shame if “Ten” were the last Mr. Big album.
Martin is right not to give a clear answer on whether “Ten” really is the end of the Mr. Big story. And let’s hope the quartet jumped the gun with the retirement talk. There are plenty of unfired bullets left, and “Ten” gives the band’s fans a lovely addition to their album collection, one that ‘clicks on the first spin’ and doesn’t want to leave the player. That’s exactly what you come for when you’re looking for a quality album. Especially in these strange times, when artistic essence is extremely diffuse and hard to pin down. “Ten”, and Mr. Big with it, have (still) got it all.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Good Luck Trying
2. I Am You
3. Right Outta Here
4. Sunday Morning Kinda Girl
5. Who We Are
6. As Good As It Gets
7. What Were You Thinking
8. Courageous
9. Up On You
10. The Frame
11. 8 Days In A Row
Lineup:
Eric Martin – vocals, guitar
Paul Gilbert – guitar, backing vocals
Billy Sheehan – bass guitar, backing vocals
Nick D’Virgilio – drums, backing vocals
