Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: May 7, 2021
Production: Robert Wright
Album length: 55.12 min
Genre: AOR/art rock
Rating: 9.5/10
Sometimes things aren’t so clear-cut and instantly decipherable once you slap an AOR label on a piece of music. Yes, that archaic genre, shoved into the musical underground ages ago, whose fossilized remains are now followed only by a few music-addled old-timers, and even that just out of nostalgia for the golden eighties. Superior proof that the AOR tag doesn’t say enough is the second studio album by Save The World. Just like their first one, which also somehow slipped right past us when it came out four years ago. The first was called “One”, the second is called “Two”, which isn’t exactly a showcase of a particularly rich (lush) imagination on the individual level, but it’s at least clear proof that these guys are capable of more than just a mechanical march, and that they can count too (at least up to two). Sarcasm aside, it’s worth pointing out right away that you don’t mess with Dan Tracey and Robert Wright, because by now it’s more than obvious that they write brilliant music and brilliant albums. “Two” follows the musical aura of the debut. It doesn’t lag behind it. It defines the artistic reach of the project even more clearly and solidly, and in the thicket of today’s melodic rock, or AOR, underground, puts it right where it belongs.
If we linger for a fleeting moment on the facts, Save the World is a duo represented by chief composer Dan Tracey and Robert Wright. Dan Tracey is a highly regarded and acclaimed composer, singer and guitarist. Over his career he’s contributed a plethora of music to high-profile TV shows and films, and has also played and recorded with renowned musicians. Right now he’s the guitarist and vocalist in the Alan Parsons Live Project. Robert Wright has made a name for himself both on stage and in the studio as a multi-instrumentalist and composer who has been very successful especially in country music, where his contributions not only made him nicely rich but also brought in a pile of platinum and gold albums.
It’s AOR with pop elements, where both musicians love to subtly slip in lines drawn from jazz, a peculiar conglomerate with a strongly defined art rock character and a charisma all its own. Once the album starts spinning, it quickly becomes clear that behind it stand not just two extremely talented but seasoned composers and studio gurus, who grew up on the sounds of The Beatles, The Bee Gees, and definitely also on the progressive rock and arena rock of the seventies, which among other things gave us the precursor band Boston. And Boston aren’t mentioned in vain. The song Man on an Island, found on the album “Two”, is a kind of tribute to Boston, since it “poisonously” pulls toward the title track of Boston’s album “Don’t Look Back” (1978) – especially the mid-eight passage, where the song’s bombast is rhythmically beefed up with added handclaps. Can it get any more rustic than that? Fans of early Night Ranger have to check this album out too (Denslow Park, Miss Muse or the closing Who’s That Girl feel like unwritten hit singles from the first two Night Ranger albums). The art character and tendency, which in mild shades and quite unobtrusively unveil leanings toward a prog-rock aura, with subtly slipped-in jazz-derived lines, will appeal to fans of Toto and Alan Parsons Project. On top of all that, both musicians have an outstanding feel for arranging harmonic melodies, which will of course be heavenly manna for all devotees of AOR, even if we throw in a few Def Leppard, and Rick Springfield too.
All in all, this is an incredibly polished west-coast AOR and art rock conglomerate lost in time and space. It’s especially impressive because, with the right levers in the right places – that is, with vivid solutions and a richly contemplative grasp of the genre finesses of jazz, eighties pop and art/prog rock – it hits just the right spot. Tracey and Wright are extremely delicate and refined in this. That’s exactly why their musical formula, which in its basic template gravitates toward AOR, soaks up so well, or rather, in its expressive form carries over and translates other genre elements so well. That kind of reconciliation is damn hard to pull off in the highly specific genre guise of eighties AOR. An album like “Two” is something you have to hunt for with a lantern in broad daylight these days. It’s a reflection of some distant times when the world was a bit more normal and healthy, and a one-of-a-kind mirror of a generation of musicians who spent their teens in the seventies. That’s why, even in the gloomy year 2021, it has a decidedly cheerful and optimistic character, which fits the dossier of twelve superbly polished tracks (and the brilliant reach of the production too) like a key in a lock. Yes. From here on it’s not hard to say that it doesn’t get better than this – or at least that it’s very hard to top what the album “Two” has captured.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Camera Obscura
2. Bones
3. Miss Muse
4. Defenders Of The Faith
5. Daphne Blue
6. When Amanda Hits The Stage
7. Man On An Island
8. Longer
9. Denslow Park
10. Automaton
11. Illuminati
12. Who’s That Girl
Line-up:
Dan Tracey – vocals, electric and acoustic guitars, piano, synthesizers, Hammond B3 organ, backing vocals, percussion
Robert Wright – drums, percussion, bass guitar, vocals, synthesizers, Taurus pedals, backing vocals, additional guitars, string arrangements
Guest musician:
Jon Wysocki – additional drums
