Artist: Berry, Robert
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2008
Duration: 50:02
Rating: 4.5/5
Robert Berry is an excellent American producer and multi-instrumentalist, known for a wildly prolific body of work. The man is an AOR rock authority, and everything he does, whether solo or in collaboration with other musicians, somehow lands on the common denominator of that “AOR” prefix.
Together with his buddies from the Sammy Hagar Band and Night Ranger, Robert Berry revived the Alliance project, which put out the insanely catchy AOR album “Road To Heaven” in May 2008, really one of the better achievements in AOR last year. His new solo studio outing, which isn’t his first and hopefully won’t be his last, is a mix of “leftover ideas” for Alliance and some completely fresh ones. On “Dividing Line” Berry gave himself even more room to maneuver for musical experimentation, and ended up with an album-length blend of exploratory beams that caress art rock urges, even prog ones in places, dare I say.
At its core the album still fits in the AOR genre box, but with the difference that it doesn’t get under your skin on the first spin; it demands repeated rotation in the CD player. Tracks like the opener Dividing Line, This Life, the riffier Listen To The People, A Life Worh Of Livin’ with its only guests, Alliance buddies Gary Pihl and David Lauser (listen for the (entirely coincidental) opening “1976-1978 Boston era” guitar ornament), and above all the “night drive” AOR gem I Give You The Best Of Me, are songs that could happily sit on any Alliance album. In contrast, Young Hearts offers an interesting artistic detour, despite the AOR compactness of its chorus. Life Is On Fire, whose opening motif pulls toward One Good Man, is a track we can call progressive, since it carries a broken tribal rhythm over which a curtain of background synths floats as the main atmospheric filler, while the rock accent comes from the lively and fat-in-the-mix thumping of the bass guitar. It’s musical exploration, a sequence of many motifs that never lose the thread of the song’s compactness, so any worry about prog fragmentation is totally unnecessary! It’s a superb closer to the album, standing out especially for its dramatic atmosphere, and the main factor that makes it so ear-friendly here too is Robert Berry’s warm, clean, clear vocal, the kind AOR not only demands but literally craves. Berry shines brightest as a singer in the art rock ballad Faith, where his yearning, heartfelt vocal keeps the drama in constant dynamic motion, like a theater piece.
Berry, a seasoned musician, squeezed out the maximum. The studio is a walk in the park for him! How to dress a song so it sounds sonically full and hits the optimal level of melodic listenability, while also mastering the art of adding that “oomph” of adventurous, exploratory spirit in just the right dose, so the compactness isn’t broken and the whole thing gets even more interesting for the music purist, is Robert Berry’s greatest strength. This is a typical Rober Berry album, one that effectively follows the engraving of its older studio siblings. Berry contributed personal, confessional lyrics and, on top of that, played all the instruments and sang all the vocals himself. Fans of Alliance, AOR, and everyone looking for the full melodic cosmetics in rock expression, with a mild art experiment that keeps things recognizable, will definitely get their money’s worth with “Dividing Line”!
Lineup
Robert Berry – vocals, all instruments
Gary Pihl – guitar on track 6
David Lauser – drums on track 6
Production
Robert Berry
Track list
1. The Dividing Line
2. One Good Man
3. Listen To The People
4. Faith
5. This Life
6. A Life Worth Livin’
7. Can’t Let Go
8. I Gave You The Best of Me
9. Young Hearts
10. Wait
11. Life Is On Fire
