Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Mr. Big
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2014
Rating: 4/5
Back together since 2009 and still kicking, super rockers Mr. Big are putting out the studio follow-up to their comeback album »What If…«, »…The Stories We Could Tell«, three years that flew by in a flash.
Stylistically, the new album sticks to the vision laid out by its predecessor. Still, we can’t ignore some of the situations Mr. Big went through while making it. What stands out most, on top of the insanely packed schedules of all four members, especially Sheehan and Gilbert, is the recent, unfortunate diagnosis that drummer Pat Thorpley has Parkinson’s disease. Because of that, the musician is no longer able to play the drums live in the middle of a studio, so together with producer Pat Regan he intensively steered the rhythmic levers of every one of the 13 new songs and fussed over the fine details that computer drum programming has to offer. Thanks to those jam-packed schedules, the band also recorded their parts separately, and Pat Regan then pieced them together into the full picture. As a result the album has a somewhat rustic sonic look, since Regan’s predecessor Kevin Shirley, as producer of »What If…«, recorded that album on the principle of the band performing live in the studio. The new album therefore has a somewhat more precise sound, while keeping all the liveliness and dynamics, making full use of the building blocks of the sonic picture, without a trace of any one part feeling inferior to the others.
»…Stories We Could Tell« is a typical Mr. Big album. That’s undeniable and impossible to miss. Eric Martin’s relived, passionate performance keeps him highly recognizable among hard rock vocalists. Over the years his voice has been thickening and going velvety, which suits him especially on the tracks that are sharpened up with more blues. Combine that with the trademark licks of the one-and-only Billy Sheehan’s cranked-up, thick and rattling ultra-kinetics on bass, and the always unpredictable stylistic chameleonism in the lucidly quirky outbursts of guitar wizard Paul Gilbert, and »…The Stories We Could Tell« is a record that’s worth sinking your teeth into.
What »What If….« hinted at, the new album digs deeper into. The band isn’t necessarily chasing hits; it’s after »feeling,« after »groove,« after »pleasure,« and with them a full-blooded, atmospheric charge. The songs are written in the classic vocabulary of hard rock, but richly stocked with escapes into the world of blues and soul and flirty funk rhythms, all of it infused with a big dose of bombastic, virtuoso extravagance, which Gilbert develops on one side and Sheehan on the other. With a whole 13 new songs, though, the album gradually becomes predictable and loses its edge. And that’s its only flaw. There are simply too many songs, and by the end you no longer even know which is which, since the lead phrases start echoing one another. There are moments of recapturing the feel of the mega-hit To Be With You, like the song Just Let Your Heart Decide. I think Mr. Big, in the mature years of their career, don’t need that at all, since they earned enough in their golden days that they don’t have to embarrass themselves. Hits and evergreen classics are simply facts of artistic unrepeatability and uniqueness.
Still, a fist of bluesy hard rock dynamite is in full expansion across the album, and it bursts at the seams with a mix of melodic catchiness and high-octane energy voltage that this quartet generates so effectively and flawlessly. The brilliant moments of lucid, improvisational outbursts throughout the record, »relieved« by the soulful vocal performance of the exceptional Eric Martin, remain the factor that puts this album among the high-quality releases we actually demand from Mr. Big. Fans of the band will be thrilled in any case.
Line-up
Eric Martin – vocals
Paul Gilbert – guitar
Billy Sheehan – bass
Pat Torpey – drums
Production
Pat Regan
Tracklist
01. Gotta Love The Ride
02. I Forget To Breathe
03. Fragile
04. Satisfied
05. The Man Who Has Everything
06. The Monster In Me
07. What If We Were New?
08. East/West
09. The Light Of Day
10. Just Let Your Heart Decide
11. It’s Always About That Girl
12. Cinderella Smile
13. The Stories We Could Tell
14. Addicted To That Rush*
*…live version, bonus track
