Stop me if you've heard this one.
1992 : Band release excellent second album on an obscure label. Lacking the oxygen of publicity, it stiffs. Band folds.
The Present Day : Erstwhile band members meet and decide to give it another go.
Many such recent reformations have been ill advised. And considering that
After Hours were never really movers or shakers to begin with - Welsh boys who bought into the American
AOR Dream - this new album, '
Against The Grain' was clearly one to approach with caution.
How wrong can you be?
This is immense. Beautifully wrought melodic rock, crafted with care, sturdily assembled and just brimful of memorably melodic songs and heartstopping hooks.
All the ingredients are there, purpose, panache and indeed, poise to make fabulous
AOR.
John Francis has a wonderful voice - an earthier version of Steve Perry's perhaps, or a huskier version of Marc Cohn's - though the comparisons tend to dismiss Francis as a soundalike.
The truth is that his voice is uniquely engaging, enlivening these superbly written songs, wringing genuine pathos from life-lesson lyrics that would have sounded merely sentimental in the hands of others.
From the first radiant bursts of Survivorish guitars on opener,
'Stand Up'; being caught totally by surprise by the sudden vertical take off of Francis's vocals, going into the bridge and chorus, to the lush romantic rhapsody,
'I Need Your Love' that closes the album.
Between times, be mightily impressed by '
Turn On Your Radio's anthemic sweep as Francis's voice soars, in Jon (Yes) Anderson-esque fashion, onto a higher plane, sweetened further by Paine's majestic axe solo.
'Eleventh Hour' has a wistful celtic feel. Dreamy, wispy, driven by shifting rhythms.
Paine eventually cranks up his guitar, allowing us to expect an upward gearshift in tempo, but the track cleverly resists the obvious, settling into a comfortable groove, one that encourages an acoustic reprise as the album's bonus track.
'Angel's and '
Let It Go's winning blend of sophisticated melodic rock and pop sensibility will recall primetime Journey.
Going back to an earlier reference, the opening bars of '
I Want Yesterday' will remind you of Marc Cohn's 'Walking In Memphis'. Both songs have that yearning, searching tone, a melancholy undertow even, though the lyrics here evoke a very different cultural landscape.
Clearly then, although the music moves in the general direction of
AOR conventionality,
After Hours' sound has undergone a major refit, including sharper songwriting, innovative arrangements and in the culmination of a collective musical experience, they give the music an indefinable quality that imbues the album with a satisfying, grown up resonance.
If any album was worth the long wait, this is it.
Written by
Brian Friday, April 22, 2011
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