Label: AOR Heaven Records
Release date: 06/21/2019
Production: Rob Moratti & Torben Enevoldsen
Album length: 45.49 min
Genre: AOR
Rating: 9.0 / 10
Rob Moratti is a Canadian vocalist who’s here for all you retro-nostalgics whose ears got stuck in the eighties, when AOR ruled the airwaves, meaning the softest version of rock music crossed with the production polish and arrangement aesthetics of the pop music rhetoric of the time.
Moratti is a seasoned musician. Over his career he honed his chops in the nineties within his own band Moratti, later joined the Canadian AOR sensation Final Frontier, stepped into the shoes of the vocalist of prog rock giants Saga for the album »Human Condition« (he also put out a live album with Saga), and later focused on a solo career. The excellent »Victory« (2011) and »Transcendence« (2016), with a tribute to the giants of the AOR craft Journey in between, which came out in 2015 as »Tribute to Journey«, are now followed this year by the new album »Renaissance«.
The new album is exactly what those two predecessors delivered. It keeps all the qualities. For the occasion, Moratti kept the same crew of musicians in the studio who already played on »Transcendence«. A top-notch crew. Not only are they excellent musicians as individuals, they’re also regarded as refined composers and arrangers. Quick rundown: bassist Tony Franklin (Blue Murder, The Firm), keyboardist Fredrik Bergh (Street Talk), guitarist Torben Enevoldsen, Moratti’s buddy from his time working together in Accacia Avenue, and drummer Stuart Reid, Moratti’s Final Frontier pal.
A good three quarters of an hour of AOR revivalist perfection is what the new album brings too. The takeaways aren’t much different when you compare the new album with its predecessors. It’s incredible how many excellent ideas piled up in the three years since »Transcendence«. Moratti is exceptionally high on the new album too. And it’s incredible how much power he unleashes even in the most extremely high registers, with his dominant, highly musical stance. This is a classically trained vocalist who, for inspiration, naturally leans hard on the figure of Journey singer Steve Perry (especially when you get to the ballad Best Of Me), though his vocal essence, when you look for comparisons, comes fairly close to that of the late Tony Mills (Shy, TNT). The arrangements are more than tailor-made for Moratti’s voice, and the singer delivers the best he knows and can.
The energy of »Renaissance« is, all things considered, cheerful, positive and uplifting, the chorus melodies hit atmospheric peaks and are brilliantly used to lift the bombast, or pomp, that the new album is steeped in. The production is practically flawless, the building blocks of the sound coexist in superb balance, which especially goes for the equal interplay of keyboards and guitar phrasing that makes up the bulk of the sonic picture, i.e. the backing. The vocals are of course placed front and center and absolutely dominate the album. What’s an essential addition is the subtle dressing of the arrangements with harmonic melodies that dramatize the whole pomp theater throughout the album. In fact, »Renaissance« is stylistically closer to the west coast AOR approach of the eighties than, say, to what the British Isles or the old European continent were offering at the same time. So. Ahead of us are ten superbly “laid down” songs, assaults of top-tier AOR revivalism whose polish never stops impressing. The album has quite a nice bunch of songs that, had it been the eighties, would have become AOR evergreens. As said. With the new album »Renaissance«, Rob Moratti presents himself in his absolute glory. Vocal and artistic.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. You Are The One
2. Let Me Be The One
3. Best of Me
4. Lift You Up
5. Hold On To Love
6. I Let You In
7. It’s Time To Go
8. Many Come Home
9. I Don’t Want To Wait Forever
10. It Hurts To Be I Love
Lineup:
Rob Moratti – vocals, backing vocals
Torben Enevoldsen – guitar, keyboards
Fredrik Bergh – keyboards
Tony Franklin – bass guitar
Stuart Reid – drums, percussion
