The Answer - Solas (Album review)

The Answer - Solas

10.28.16

Album review

The Answer latest studio release was a remarkable achievement, ditching the produced sound of New Horizon in favor of more stripped down sonics, a fantastic showcase for the dominating hard blues songs. Rightfully hailed (by me, at least) as their best album so far, Raise A Little Hell featured an all-killer no-filler track listing: Red, Long Live The Renegades, the title track, Aristocrat, Whiplash all showed the band at their peak. Having witnessed them live during the subsequent tour, my impression was confirmed by an eye and ear testimony: albeit a little short, their Paris set was truly energetic.

In fact, the band was slowly descending through dark days. While truly appreciated and supported by the classic rock loving crowd, mainstream success was escaping them and the initial exposure gained by their knighting by peers Jimmy Page, Paul Rodgers and AC/DC whom their opened for back in 2009, was fading away. The band’s growing trauma was fueled by personal issues, notably when singer Cormac Neeson nearly lost his young son to a serious illness.

“Do we just make another rock record and go through the motions?’ No one was excited by that. Everybody was burnt-out by that point. It felt like we’d been in a van, just looking at each other, for ten years. We were thinking, ‘How do we move this on?’ And we didn’t have the answer”.

 

The Answer’s new album, SOLAS, appears as the direct product of these dark days, an aural therapy for a band desperately searching for light. Interestingly, we’re not in St Anger territory here. Our Irish rockers opt for a much produced sound, with vastly layered sonic landscapes rather than a stripped down record. This production choice does wonders on Beautiful World or the title track. The usual Zeppelin comparison comes to mind, and sounds definitely well deserved. One rightfully wonders how this sound will translate in live performances.

“Cormac allows himself to be vulnerable. As a frontman, that’s very hard to do, because you’re meant to be the strong guy at the front who has no weakness. All my favourite lyricists, that’s what they do. They bare their souls, for better or worse.”

Lyrics reveal the difficult context in which the album was composed and recorded. This is not your foot-stomping joyful rock album, folks. There’s a very moody, grim and, let’s say it, sad and depressing atmosphere on SOLAS. The title track quasi shamanic chants set the tone masterfully, but that’s truly the lyrics that convey this impression. “What the light don’t fill, the darkness kills”.

Regarding that idea, Tunnel is perhaps exhibit #1:”Every day, we get further down the tunnel/Every day, it’s so hard to see/Maybe life shouldn’t be such a struggle/ Every day, it’s so hard…”

Interestingly, even the most “uplifting” tracks fail to deviate much from this mood: the reworking of Battlecry (now in two words), Real Life Dreamers and Untrue Colors all sound as if there’s an unescapable threat just behind your back. In a logical kind of way, these tracks are also the less convincing, with Untrue Colors being pretty awful. I’m not very fond of the reworked Battle Cry either: the added Gaelic (?) chants are a bit too much, and I loved the rhythm of the original better. The band thought otherwise –the original version wasn’t finished and logically was relegated as a “digital b-side”.

Thankfully, the high points by far overtake the low ones. A track of note is the acoustic driven In This Land which has really interesting dynamics and evokes countryside and highlands horizons, thanks to its intricate guitar melodies and its catchy chorus. This track could be a moderately successful folk rock single, if they deem it worthy of receiving a music video.

                All in all, SOLAS is a great album. It’s weird to me to think that it should be seen as a comeback album considering that I see Raise A Little Hell as their best by far. It’s nearly impossible to rank among their output because it showcases a vastly different sound. Searching for the light among the darkness, who knows which path our Irish rockers will follow next? The Answer lies ahead.

Bonus tracks:

As usual, The Answer covers all bases and tries to please them all by releasing the album in various configurations, most of them offering additional content.

As far as I know, the Pledgemusic exclusive CD-version is the most complete, with three bonus tracks (the Japanese release features the same three tracks).

The acoustic version of In This Land doesn’t add much to the standard version. It’s simply a remixing of the same take in a stripped down fashion. If The Answer have indeed a “tradition” of releasing acoustic versions of their songs, this rendition is pretty disappointing.

The demo of Light In Darkness (do you see a lyrical pattern here?) is a far more interesting track. I would have loved to have this on the track listing instead of Untrue Colors, for instance.

The final track is a great cover of Pink Floyd’s Money. Initially, I thought it would be a recording of their live performance of the song at Abbey Road but it’s in fact a really cool studio performance. The live version is superior, but this one is great to have. It does detract a bit from the flow and the atmosphere, so it’s nice that it was put at the end of the album.

 

Ace Frehley - Origins vol. 1 (Album review)

                

 Ah, the « cover album syndrome ». A household name making a cover album is often seen as either a cash grab, a desperate –and paradoxal- attempt to stay relevant by releasing a product without much songwriting effort.

In the classic rock sphere, most recent attempts have been a kind of a mixed bag. The self-titled release of the super group “Hollywood Vampires” was mostly composed of cover songs, from Paul McCartney to Led Zeppelin. The album featured three rather bland original compositions which did not manage to convince me that all the fuss about this band was actually justified. The cover exercise in itself wasn’t even remotely that interesting, because the whole bunch of the album was made of very famous songs: Whole Lotta Love is probably Led Zeppelin’s most known song, and My Generation is pretty recognizable. And Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall isn’t exactly unknown, either.

On the other side of the spectrum, we find the poorly named Comeblack album by the Scorpions. This cover album was partly composed of bad cover songs of bands that inspired the German rocker (the Kinks, T. Rex, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles to name a few). The other half of the album was composed of songs where the band was covering their own past hits from the 80s and early 90s. The problem was that the arrangements were for the most part, exactly the same as their original versions with a slicker –and more compressed-, modern sound. I don’t know about you, but I fail to see the point in preferring a slicker but worse sounding version of Still Loving You or Rock You Like a Hurricane, when the originals sound perfect in all their 80s glory? And god, Klaus does sound fucking old on No One Like You…

People were intrigued when Ace Frehley of KISS fame announced his cover album, Origins vol. 1. Thankfully, I find it better than the two examples I just described.

Most of the album is made of cover songs from bands that inspired Ace. For the most part, the performances range from honest to pretty good, as one could expect. While he’s merely a decent singer, Ace really hasn’t lost his guitar chops!

 What bothers me is the production: songs like Spanish Castle Magic and Bring it On Home don’t need a polished sound, but they actually cry for a very dirty sound. The very slick drum sound and compressed guitars work well on songs like Wild Thing, even if I find the song itself boring.

Ace’s cover of Emerald by Thin Lizzy is really good. That is, until he exchanges solos with Slash, who guests on the track. I was very disappointed because they sound like they’re just noodling, without listening to each other and trying to make a solo which fits the song. Magic Carpet Ride is cool, and White Room is pretty good too.

But the real shining star of Ace’s galaxy of songs is Fire and Water, which features no one else that KISS’ Paul Stanley on lead vocals. Now that was unexpected considering the constant bickering that has become the norm between current and former members of KISS. And do you know what was even more unexpected? Paul actually sounds great! He switches to a way lower register than usual, and it suits him very well.

While we’re talking about KISS, the attentive reader sure can’t help but witness that there are lots of KISS covers on this album. For the most part, these are Ace’s songs and here, the slick sound really works. Parasite especially shines, and Cold Gin does too while featuring Ace on lead vocals instead of Gene Simmons on the original version. Not the best but perhaps the most intriguing is  the presence of Rock N’ Roll Hell, a song from the 1982 album Creatures of the Night, which featured Ace on its cover even if the Spaceman didn’t record or write a single note for it. Ace’s rendition, where he features on lead vocals once again instead of Gene, is pretty good. All in all, Ace’s take on covering KISS songs is far more convincing than the awful cover album Jingoku Retsuden, where the current KISS line up re-recorded KISS Klassics.

Far from being a great album, and while it doesn’t reach the heights of Ace’s versions of 2000 Man or New York Groove, Origins vol. 1 is a fun listen. Now I’ll be quite interested in knowing the tracklist for its supposed sequel…