Artist: Dante Fox
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2007
Dante Fox’s third album after almost 10 years of silence is a very welcome comeback. But one swallow doesn’t make a summer, and that doesn’t mean “Under The Seven Skies” is anything special or a uniquely recognizable musical achievement.
“Under The Seven Skies” is the band’s third album overall, following the self-titled debut from 1996 and “The Fire Within” (1998). On the new record, Dante Fox are definitely more mature. Compared to its predecessors, the album is more polished in how the individual songs are finished, with more attention paid to the little embellishments on the transitions into and out of the instrumental middle sections, and the variety of motifs (in the intros and outros of the songs) is richer too. This album should appeal to fans of old-school British AOR rock (Heart).
What robs the album of its drive is the predictability and, at times, motifs that have been chewed over and used 1000 times already (Lucky One’s, Save Me), and not even the expressive female vocal, pushed to the front of the mix by the production, can make up for it. Sue Willetts’ voice is accomplished, polished and expressive, mind you. As such it has depth and power, especially in the mid and upper-mid ranges. Her tone and singing style are made for pop rock or soul pop. She’s simply too pretty for hard rock. She also has a special vibrato touch that sounds great in places, especially on the mid-tempo songs, where she manages to fill the tracks with a particular kind of intensity (Breaking Me Down, Walking The Line). A lack of intensity is the Achilles’ heel of this album, though, especially when it comes to the bland guitar motifs and soloing, and a bigger contribution from the keyboard arrangements is sorely missed too. There’s no wit in the playing at all, you simply can’t sense any chemistry, because there’s no feeling of real interplay between the guitar and the keyboards. Dante Fox don’t reach the standards that plenty of other bands in this genre have set these days, so I can conclude that the band was run over by time during ten years of silence and absence. The cheesy lyrics, which don’t exactly reach a high intellectual level, are also a turn-off. It’s a very American, commercial-sounding album that offers precious little freshness or original ideas that could grab your attention or put anything new on the musical map. You run into terrifying peaks of sugary sweetness with the greatest of ease in the choruses of Hold Out Your Hand, Goodbye To Yesterday and Love Tried To Find You, and on Save Me and Lucky One’s especially, the repetition of those neutered, pathetic-sounding choruses really hurts your ears.
The tracks have the tried-and-tested (cookie-cutter) melodicism of hard rock, and the band can play, no doubt about that. But “Under The Seven Skies” is a very cautious “come back” album that first and foremost wants to please the masses, and it’s missing identity, conviction and balls. Sue really stands out with her vocals, while the rest of the band is somehow hidden in her shadow. The soloing is also awfully predictable and textbook-by-the-numbers. The sterile production adds a lot to that, sounding ironed-out and retro “eighties,” and you simply can’t feel any real dynamics or depth in the sound. A bland album with precious little, if any, wit and spark.
Lineup
Sue Willetts – vocals
Tim Mandford – guitar, backing vocals
Roman Wieckowski – keyboards, string arrangements, backing vocals
Mike Dagnall – bass guitar, backing vocals
Mick Hales – drums, percussion
GUEST MUSICIAN:
Tony Mills (TNT) – backing vocals, vocal harmony arrangements
Production
Mark V. Stuart & Dante Fox
Track list
1. The Last Goodbye
2. Firing Guns
3. Hold Out Your Hand
4. Breakin’ Me Down
5. Goodbye To Yesterday
6. Walkin’ The Line
7. Love Tried To Find You
8. Save Me
9. Lucky Ones
10. Under The Seven Skies
Running time: 52.03
