Artist: Strangeways
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2010
Runtime: 58:59
Rating: 2/5
Strangeways are a Scottish band from Glasgow who left an indelible mark on the then-thriving AOR scene in the second half of the eighties with the albums “Strangeways” (1986), “Native Sons” (1987) and the best of the three, “Walk In The Fire” (1989). The nineties “swallowed” this band too, and the albums that followed (they managed three more) have nothing much to brag about, apart from more or less musical experimentation, which didn’t necessarily do the band any favors. With the ambient “Gravitation Pull” (2000), Strangeways definitely hit the point furthest from their musical roots.
A full 10 years have passed since then, and from the golden line-up the band still has American singer Terry Brock (these days also in Giant), guitarist Ian Stewart and drummer Jim Drummond. Ian’s brother David, the bassist, has left the band, and new bassist Warren Jolly has stepped into his place. Strangeways have also grown from a quartet into a quintet, adding a keyboardist to the line-up: David “Munch” Moore.
The material shows where Strangeways come from. Right from the start they serve up Perfect World (the fastest song on the album), Borderlines and especially the fourth track, the excellently built ballad Time, proving that they haven’t lost their feel for catchy melodies at all.
The problem with the new album is above all its production. It’s deliberately dirty. Strangeways are rocking a kind of “modern” indie sound, where the guitars love to rasp. With that, they’ve done themselves nothing but a disservice. That’s why we can’t talk about AOR this time around. This isn’t AOR anymore. But when we call “Gravitation Pull” to mind, we can be very grateful for “Perfect World”. Strangeways have gone back to writing rock music. The taste still stays more than bitter, though, especially after what Terry Brock’s solo studio album “Diamond Blue” showed us, one of the finest AOR documents to come out this year, and the kind of album that, judging by “Perfect World”, Strangeways can only dream of today.
Like I said. The first half of the album in particular has lovely AOR potential in the way the songs are built, but the downright sloppy, or (deliberately) kept raw, production pulls it far away from that. The songs even come with layered vocal harmonies. There’s no shortage of soloing either. And really high-quality soloing at that, full of polished melodic definition, but what good is that when the album sits on a “dirty” production platform, where even the excellent setup of Terry Brock’s one-of-a-kind vocal contours can’t fully come alive. The song Liberty is one of the few moments that suits the stripped-down production, and that’s mostly thanks to the acoustic backing in the verse, which handles that production a lot more easily when paired with the melodicism the album certainly doesn’t lack. It’s also worth pointing out the very modest use of keyboards, whose sound barely comes through in the production. Given their undemanding arrangements, it even raises the question of whether bringing a keyboardist into the band made any sense.
In the second half the album finally goes watery, especially at the expense of its middle-of-the-road leanings, ambient dreaminess and the songs all sounding alike. True, the dirty, alt-growling guitar production tries to fill in the background of the sonic picture, and Bushfire, To Far Gone and Can’t Let You Go work effectively as depressing songs, but you can’t shake the nagging feeling that the songwriting is sitting on untapped potential for a proper AOR/melodic rock album. The feeling of sniffing violets in a gas mask is wrapped up by the art/alt-rock Say What You Want, a crossbreed between Marillion in the Hogarth era (verse) and Coldplay (chorus). The production works out nicely on this song, but guys? Have you really sunk so deep into a midlife crisis that you need to imitate the sad-eyed MTV grumblers?
“Perfect World” brings a return to rock music, which we can be thankful for. The songs don’t hide their innate sense for the figuration of well-crafted melodies, which was the superior domain of the band’s first three albums. And that’s exactly where the missed opportunity lies, because this time Strangeways reached for an alternative, smeared sound that in no way tips the scales toward calling this a proper, melodic-rock-shaped album. Is it just a bad moment of studio sloppiness, or a pathetic search for “being different”? If it’s the latter, then we can conclude that with “Perfect World” Strangeways foolishly traded away their distinctiveness for a “difference” that is anything but different. An album that’s best forgotten as soon as possible, in the hope that the band can still fix the mistake with the next one and serve the scene a proper AOR/melodic rock achievement. Because that’s what they do best, and what they’ve always done best.
Line-up
Terry Brock – vocals
Ian J. Stewart – guitar
David “Munch” Moore – keyboards
Warren Jolly – bass
Jim Drummond – drums
Production
Strangeways
Tracklist
1. Perfect World
2. Borderlines
3. Movin On
4. Time
5. Crackin’ Up Baby
6. Liberty
7. One More Day
8. Bushfire
9. Too Far Gone
10. Can’t Let You Go
11. Say What You Want
