How old is this guy? Three?
That was my first thought when I heard the keyboard melody in the opening song. Luckily it only got better from there.
In fact, this a strong Melodic Rock album with a couple of fantastic songs, many good ones and a few of standard quality. After the first listen I thought it was nothing special, but having this promo in my cd player for the past few months changed my mind. Now I suddenly find myself walking around humming the songs.
If you like sweet Melodic Rock, like Tal Bachman or Hugo, then here is something for you. Mikael Erdlandsson is the singer and Songwriter behind The Gift, an album filled with lots of catchy Rock tunes. He has a very soft voice that gets under your skin. It's very soothing in it's own way and has a lot of feeling. Most of the songs have good melodies and catchy choruses. But I miss a harder edge in some of the songs. A couple of songs raise the "sweetness" level a little too high. Some more guitar in most of the songs would have made the album more interesting to me, but the songs still survive due to their ultra melodic form.
Favourites include the earhanger
Stop, where some vocal effects actually work very well, and help empahsise the excellent sing-a-long chorus.
Stay is my favourite. It's a pretty simple, but very effective song. It has a huge chorus and the way Mikael sings it is excellent and powerful. A fanstastic song. Is it just me who is reminded by Abba when I hear some of the keyboard parts in this song?
Love's got a hold on me is typical for this album. A feel-good song that it's almost impossible not to like. Nice verse and excellent melodic chorus.
Good songs like
This is your life and
I send you my heart pull the album up from a couple of average songs, like
Million Dollar Girl, which is very simple and has a chorus that is starting to get on my nerves.
Soul is my name is a blues type ballad that doesn't quite do it for me. The song has a good melody line, but after the first minute the song doesn't go anywhere.
The Gift should please most fans of Melodic Rock. The melodies are high quality, but I would have liked at little more guitar to spice things up. If all the songs was of the same quality as
Stop or
Stay then this would have been amazing.
Written by
Steen Sunday, March 9, 2003
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