Robbie
Valentine's last handful of releases have, bar one, been Japan only affairs.
Japanese rock fans clearly believe you can never have enough of a good thing.
Europe has remained largely cold to
Valentine's grandiose, highly derivative music - a variant of the sound of more famous bands like
Queen and Sparks, with the bombast ramped up to eleven. Yet US bands doing exactly the same thing, like The Scissor Sisters, achieve significant success. Strange world indeed.
As the title of his newest album would suggest,
Valentine has never lacked confidence or image awareness.
He's assembled a new band - that fine guitarist, Cyril Whistler on lead; Johann Willems on keys and bgvs, with Andre Bergman and the silver tongued Liselotte (Ayreon) Hegt forming a rock solid, bolted to the floor rhythm section.
'Androgenius' is a double CD affair, a split between the past and the present. Essentially, a reintroduction to the artist for European audiences.
Though If Robbie
Valentine was to achieve a rock'n'roll resurrection in Europe, it would be remarkable.
His sound, an operatic slant on classic pop and rock, full of grand, orchestral gestures, is firmly ensconced in a niche market of one. Two if you include the lesser known
Valensia Clarkson (who pops up on backing vocals on a couple of tracks here).
Doesn't make him a bad person of course, but you have to think that his music remains a constant for hardcore fans alone.
Valentine's best material, like '
Over And Over' and '
The Magic Breeze' has been re-recorded using state of the art studio technology and sounds powerful and vital. And massively loud. These 2 plus another 14 tracks make up the first disc.
His newer material (you're ahead of me here, I'm sure) is contained on disc 2.
Lyrically, the older stuff makes only the occasional reference to confused sexuality, primarilly tracing the fault line through failed personal relationships, with little fanfare. The pomp and splendour is reserved solely for the music.
Valentine, responsible for almost all keyboards and synths, doesn't lack subtlety in his playing or programming, but can be inclined to lay it on thick to accentuate a line, a hook, or to heighten a mood. And mostly it works a treat.
It all probably coalesces best around
'I Believe In Music', a joyous, heavily orchestrated, ELO-esque romp through a great pop song, with a smile inducing, 'hooked on classics' middle eight.
Elsewhere on disc one, there are strong and welcome echoes of Iva (Icehouse) Davies on
'She (Abandoned Heart)', while the breezily insistent
'Visionary Victim' is tight and dynamic.
'
No Turning Back' contains all the aforementioned ingredients - potentially an over-rich mixture - but the massed choir remains agile, keyboards and guitars are fleet of foot, the melodic hook is short and sharp, and the whole song builds to an epic finale, beautifully arranged.
Disc 2 is made up amost entirely of tracks taken from his last two albums,
'Most Beautiful Pain' (2006) and '
Falling Down In Misanthropolis' (2007).
Whether it's a huge, mechanised riff and a cold steel pulse on
'Save Myself' or a staccatto melody line and a hardhitting chorus on
'Falling Down',
Valentine has never sounded heavier or more contemporary.
The sumptuous operatic grooves have been replaced by hardbodied, toughened up guitars, samples and earsplitting beats. It's hardly minimalist, but now the music's classical pretensions remain orchestrated just below the surface, sometimes fighting to break through, at others content to stay in the background.
Few fans will claim
Valentine's sound as an original artifice. But the surprisingly understated
'I'm Going Under' presents evidence of sorts that he is an auteur in his own right, with the track full of entertaining digressions, crescendos and glances back in time, and an aurally adhesive hook.
Elsewhere,
'Fear Of Heights' is
Valentine's nod to Genesis,
'SOS' an obvious acknowledgement of Abba's pop greatness and wonderfully apposite closer,
'I Can't Get Over You' a long, purposefull step back toward the sound of the
'Past', like it knows that's where the man's heart remains.
No question that
Valentine is a giant talent, a fact clearly recognised by Japanese rock fans, but Europeans will remain unconvinced.
Written by
Brian Wednesday, August 26, 2009
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