Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Newman
Label: AOR Heaven Records
Release: 2015
Runtime: 55:25
Rating: 3.5/5
If anyone fits the bill, it’s Steve Nweman and his band Nemwan, one of the surviving cavalrymen of the British AOR story, who keep bringing products of undisputed, high-quality guarantee to the scene, with their ever-reliable artistry.
The guy is at his artistic zenith and keeps up his excellent songwriting form. Even across the two-year gap he needed to put together the album »The Elegance Machine«. After the excellent predecessor »Sirens«, that’s certainly the hardest thing to pull off: making an even better album than the otherwise superb predecessor, or at least holding the same level of quality. Newman definitely managed the latter, at least. Once again Steve Newman wrote all of the album’s new songs, except for Halo, which came out of Steve Newman’s collaboration with Paul Boyle.
»The Elegance Machine« does try to be a dark album, at least at the start. That’s quite a tall order when you’re using the synth makeup of the eighties in the production. Steve Newman doesn’t lose sleep over it and heads into the gloom uncompromisingly with the opener The Suit (Skyscraper), where he deliberately goes for a throaty, raspy vocal approach. A striking opening guitar riff lifts the song out of the average, while the vocals prove that by overdoing the throatiness Steve doesn’t develop the vocal power we’re used to from him when he goes with clean vocals. That’s one of the album’s minor minuses. You can’t really fault the ambitious start, but the title track lifts it to a higher level, with vocal choir harmonies joining the arrangements more intensely and backing Steve Newman’s lead vocal, grabbing the atmosphere effectively and bringing in the desired, if not downright required, element of AOR pomp and bombast. And the third song leaves behind one of the strongest chorus melodies in the prime AOR treasury. That’s Dont’ Stay Lonely, which blasts you straight back to the golden days of eighties British AOR.
The rest of the album also serves up some exceptional compositions from the finest stock of the British melodic rock tradition. From the lead guitar phrases to the high musicality payoff in the choruses. The build-up of atmosphere is optimized through the verse – chorus pairings, and Steve Newman once again proves himself as a composer in how effectively he repackages tried-and-tested phrases from the otherwise strictly staked-out, formulaic treasury of AOR music. The phrases will sound so familiar to you, yet more ignitive than ever. Even though the album also has moments that drag a little too generically, like the chorus of Pretender Surrender, or the completely superfluous piano ballad at the tail end of the album called Scars. Otherwise, though, you’ll mostly find (and that counts!) excellent compositions that grab skillfully for bombast, especially in the choruses. Mission effectively accomplished! Songs like that are Confess, Prayer for the Apollo, She Walks in Silence, or One Good Reason, with a similar wake-up-call moment to the already mentioned Don’t Stay Lonely.
In the studio, Steve Newman was once again joined by his easygoing and inseparable buddy Rob McEwen, who has now contributed drums to Newman’s 8th studio album, while backing vocals came from Geoff Wootton (songs The Suit, One Good Reason and Halo) and Mark Thompson-Smith (Praying Mantis), who also worked with Steve Newman on their joint project Big Life (songs Illuminate, Send Us Salvation and Pretender Surrender).
»The Elegance Machine« is thus an entirely new, extremely good studio album from Steve Newman. It can’t quite boast the competence of its predecessor »Sirens«, but most of the songs keep the typical AOR swagger of the British scene, with a recognizable pinch of melancholy, and show that Newman held on to his creative inspiration and carried it over to the new album in satisfying fashion.
Line-up
Production
Steve Newman
Track list
1. The Suit (Skyscraper)
2. The Elegance Machine
3. Don’t Stay Lonely
4. Illuminate
5. Confess
6. Halo
7. Prayer For Apollo
8. She Walks In Silence
9. One Good Reason
10. Pretender Surrender
11. Send Us Salvation
12. Scars
