My Top Ten releases from last year.
Interestingly, when you actually sit down to pick them, it's always surprising how difficult an ostensibly fun task can be.
And so, sitting back, feet up, bottle of beer in one hand, and No New Year Resolutions in the other (no fitness regimes, no diets, etc etc), I can state, in no particular order, 10 from 10 as follows:-
Terra Nova - Come Alive
On this new album, (Fred) Hendrix - writer, producer, vocalist - takes all the best elements of 'Living It Up', itself a larger than life homage to the glory days of eighties AOR, and marries them to a newfound maturity in rock song composition and production.
Casablanca - Kings Queens & Guillotine
Frankly, I haven't heard a band this good, signed or unsigned, for quite a while.
There's an obvious affinity with Kiss and Alice Cooper, picking up and running with the template in much the same manner as today's pretenders, like Wigwam and The Poodles. But over these six, eminently tuneful, head turning songs, Casablanca have shaped and formed that glammy, hard rock template into their own likeness.
Only six songs - but every one is a genuine winner.
Angeline - Confessions
Let's namecheck a few bands just to set the mood here. Gun, circa "Gallus", Harem Scarem when they got Rubberised and 'Pull' era Winger are three - this Swedish band's first full length studio album is just brimming over with abrasive melodic rock, clanging, clattering rhythms and ringing, zinging guitars.
Jettblack - Get Your Hands Dirty
This full blooded debut is full of snarling, swaggering riffs, stretched tight and holding taut throughout an album of well crafted songs and down to the wire delivery.
Razoring axes and hardbodied hooks combine perfectly with John Dow's scorched voice and sometime Coverdale vocal mannerisms, creating a defiantly airlocked British version of modern hard rock.
John M Keane - Everything Changed
You a CSI fan? No, me neither. But for the millions who are, the theme tune will be familiar. It was written by Grammy Award winning John M Keane, formerly one half of the Keane Brothers, a duo who enjoyed considerably more than fifteen minutes in the late seventies.
This mainly piano driven solo album confirms Keane to be a gifted writer of melodies and lyrics.
Reminiscent of Third Matinee's 'Meanwhile' (Leonard and Page's finest hour), it gets underneath the skin of human relationships and examines the American Dream.
Mr Mister - Pull
Recorded in 1989 at all the classic California studios by musicians and technicians san pareil, 'Pull' was one of the last great melodic rock albums of the eighties.
We just didn't know it until now.
Gun - Popkiller
The great thing about 'Popkiller', the album, is the band members' refusal to allow their past get in the way of their future. They really took a chance with this mini-statement, and risked falling on their faces. But in picking their sharpest, toughest tunes and dressing them up in cutting edge studio minimalism, they may well have elevated garage rock to an art form.
Rock Sugar - Imaginator
Reflecting the threesome's technical prowess in the studio, the production sounds like its had the UK's national debt spent on it, or at least an investment banker's bonus. It's crisp, it's clean, it's polished, it's gleaming. Harnell's vocals are as clear as a bell and the backing vocals shine brightly behind him.
And maybe more importantly, they've managed to avoid the karaoke trap, through sheer ability and expertise.
Unarguably, 'Reimaginator' isn't original, but it's creative, technically brilliant and hugely enjoyable.
Hungry Heart - Ticket To Paradise
It's much more usual for a band to stumble at the second fence, having used up their best songs on the debut. Hungry Heart are clearly no prisoners to convention as judging by 'One Ticket To Paradise', they saved the best stuff for the follow up.
Either that or they've learned the art of writing impressively melodic songs in the interim.
Helloween - Seven Sinners
Older and wiser, but no less energetic and still raising hell, Helloween might just have delivered their hardest, fastest, heaviest, most consistent album ever. An album that refuses to play safe, but only takes those risks that are calculated, measured by experienced hands or simply trusted to instinct.
For fans who once thought that Helloween would inherit the heavy metal earth, rather than simply stake out a sizeable chunk of real estate, this album may well revive those old ambitions.
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