Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: 9/17/2021
Production: Dave Dalone
Album length: 48.11 min
Genre: AOR revival / Hard Rock
Rating: 9.0/10
Robin has usually been a bad guy, well, if not Hot, then at least Hood. Legends aside, here’s the “red” one. Robin Red. Robin, a member of the Swedish rock outfit degreed, who are currently wrapping up their sixth studio album, decided last year to send his demo recordings straight to the label Frontiers Music Srl. Their A&R people were thrilled with what they heard. Robin had, after all, been thinking about a solo album for years. He dreamed of making a record that takes him back to his teenage dreams, when he grew up on the sounds of hits by Bryan Adams and Jimmy Barnes.
Robin brought in Dave Dalone, the driving force of H.E.A.T., to collaborate. Dalone can do it all. Composer, arranger, multi-instrumentalist, and on top of that, producer. Dalone is the tipping point that brought Red’s dreams closer to reality, or even embodied them. The sound of this album, the debut “Robin Red”, occasionally hints that some of its ideas could just as well have ended up on one of the H.E.A.T. albums (in a different production and arrangement setting, of course). The approach should also appeal to fans of the band’s first album, where things get a little softer, as in the song Everlyn, and the likes of Palace too. A melodic rock album leaning heavily on the sound and achievements of eighties AOR. There’s no shortage of pomp and bombast. Red’s vocals fit this musical recipe like a glove, and across twelve songs they keep the allure and the hunger going, just what this kind of genre revival not only needs in 2021, but demands.
No missteps. Swedish perfectionism, focus, meticulousness and commitment don’t leave us hanging this time either. Whenever Scandinavian musicians sit down to write music, the results rarely disappoint, and “Robin Red” will get under the skin of fans of melodic rock, the kind that rubs shoulders with eighties pop, in no time. If not sooner, the bombast built up by the chorus of Freedom will surely win you over completely.
The album opens with one of its most appealing and polished compositions, Don’t Leave Me (With A Broken Heart), written by Thomas Jakobsson and Björn Axelsson back in the early nineties. It was originally meant for the famed Swedish artist Carola Häggkvist, who recorded vocals for it only for the first demo but never released the song. By a twist of fate it landed in Robin’s hands, and he didn’t hesitate for long, seized the opportunity and became the first artist to officially record and release it. It’s a song that blasts you straight into the mid-eighties, with modern sonic touches that keep things organic and full of live energy, and an ideal opening catalyst that gives the record the lift it needs and keeps the listener glued in what follows. Matching it, just before the end, is NItelife, which spins that archetypal bubbling optimism of the carefree eighties, so typical of the vibe of classic west coast acts like Survivor and Night Ranger too.
Everything is in its place. Catchy melodies, ultra-musicality, a developed sense of drama and theatre that creates a heady, atmospheric, pomp-fueled hunger, polished mid-eighties passages (solos included), lead vocals dressed up with backing vocal harmonies, synths rustling in true eighties fashion, occasionally tempered with more classic retro-Hammond touches, and so on. And above it all, of course, the phenomenal voice of Robin Red takes center stage.
Twelve tracks, under 50 minutes of music (a good 48 minutes), absolute consistency when it comes to quality and execution. Despite a clearly drawn composing template, where nobody’s discovering fire anymore, the album develops a welcome and appealing variety of ideas. The Red-Dalone tandem is clearly the essential ingredient of this whole album, and it leaves you thinking that it would be very welcome for this creative duo to come up with something as good as Robin Red’s studio debut again in the future.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Don’t Leave Me (With A Broken Heart)
2. (I’m A) Bad Habit
3. Everlyn
4. Freedom
5. Midnight Rain
6. Can’t Get Enough
7. Reason To Survive
8. Heart Of Stone
9. Nitelife
10. Head Over Heels
11. Livin’ Dead
12. Living For
Lineup:
Robin Red – vocals, backing vocals, bass guitar
Dave Dalone – guitar, synthesizers, backing vocals, percussion
Mats Eriksson – drums
Erik Modin – percussion
Joan Eriksson – piano, backing vocals
Jona Tee – organ
Petra Eriksson – backing vocals
