Reckless Love's debut last year caused something of a storm, picking up plaudits in the press and being acclaimed by fans of the genre.
Building on the back of that initial success, the label has reissued the debut - the 'Cool Edition' - beefing it up with the addition of 5 bonus tracks.
More on them in a moment.
First, a few moments reminding ourselves of the initial release.
Over the months, I've found that you need to wade into this album's deep (relatively speaking) waters to find the real prizes.
Having trawled through Reckless Love's debut many times, I re-discovered 2 tracks that effectively slipped through the net first time round.
For most of this album, the song titles -
'Feel My Heat', '
Love Machine' and indeed,
'Sex' are indicative of the music's decidedly teenage articulation. Then along comes
'Romance', a spectacular, contemporary glamrock song that it has a real grown up resonance, thus rendering it album standout by a considerable margin.
That said, the thumping, memorably melodic Eurorock of '
Back To Paradise' might just force you to reconsider that judgement.
Clearly the band and the label thought this song was so good, they added two more versions as bonus tracks. One, a beautifully measured, imaginatively arranged acoustic version. And two, a dance version, rocked up with Balearic size beats and the electronic keyboard pulse of international clubland.
Being young, the band have no fear. How else could you explain their decision to cover
Def Leppard's
'Hysteria', and acoustically at that.
Actually, it's rather good, again thanks to an inventive arrangement, instrumentally and vocally - echoing the original's backing-vocals-as-lead innovation.
New track
'Get Electric' is immense. It's unarguably shaped in the
Def Leppard mould, but climbs out and up into a truly awesome melodic rock song.
The last of the bonus tracks,
'Sex' also gets the acoustic treatment, turning the song into something much more interesting than the played out, clichéd, done-to-death subject matter that the title might suggest.
The five additional tracks turn out then to be genuine bonuses. It's hard to guess if owners of the original album will shell out their hard earned cash for this CD.
If they are available as downloads then that's the way to do it I guess, but one way or the other these additions will do nothing but enhance the band's reputation.
'Cool Edition' indeed.
Written by
Brian Tuesday, January 11, 2011
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