Chris Rea Ost Malone Flac

After seven albums, Chris Rea was finally beginning to get the hang of what makes a commercial success. He had not changed his style throughout the 1980s, but now it was 1985 and the synth pop sounds and new romantics were both long gone – and in their place were stadium-filling anthemic rock or power ballads. Shamrock Diaries was a mix of soft ballads like "Chisel Hill" and "One Golden Rule" along with saxophone-led uptempo numbers such as the title track and the feel-good song of the summer, "All Summer Long," which would have made an ideal single had Magnet decided to release it.

La Passione is a novelty in the Chris Rea catalog, but a nice one at that. It’s a film soundtrack to a film he wrote but it sounds like a musical at times. With orchestral string movements mixed between familiar sounding Rea songs the overall is a relaxing lounge affair that even has guest vocals from the legendary Shirley Bassey on two numbers, making one a duet. It’s funny hearing Rea’s bluesy growl amid a sixties style orchestral sweep and although he’s no Tony Bennet it’s still pleasant. If you prefer the more pop/rock Rea then this is not the place to go but if like the cinematic atmosphere then it’s a nice detour and one of the strongest of his nineties albums.

Five CD box set containing a quintet of original albums from this British singer/songwriter: Espresso Logic, On The Beach, Road To Hell, Shamrock Diaries and Watersign

This album, with which the singer reached his commercial peak, reflects Chris Rea's love/hate relationship with the car. The title track is famously inspired by Rea's experiences of the M25, but this is not a simple tract on the evils of the automobile–in 1988, he bought himself a racing car. His vision of hell is the traffic jam that stops you from using all that expensive acceleration. In this sense Chris Rea–the epitome of maturity compared to most in his business–shows himself still very much a rock star. The Road To Hell, despite the melancholy piano riff of the song itself and its Leonard Cohen-ish lyrics, is an optimistic album with a warm, embracing sound. This album is graced with some of Rea's finest creations: the spacey "Daytona", the topicality of "You Must Be Evil" and the catchy "That's What They Always Say". "Texas" is another witty commentary on the need for speed, and like many of the tracks on this disc it has the mellow groove that Rea has made his own.

New Light Through Old Windows is a compilation album by Chris Rea, released in 1988. The album consists primarily of re-recordings of songs released on earlier Rea albums, as well as two new songs, "Working on It" (which gave him a rare U.S. chart single, peaking at #73 on the Billboard Hot 100, and giving him his only #1 single on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart) and "Driving Home for Christmas.", also the re-recording of "On the Beach" gave him another rare US hit, it peaked #9 on the US AC chart in 1988 and #12 in the UK chart.

Chris Rea remained one of the best-kept secrets in the music industry, releasing five albums between 1979 and 1983, none of them reaching even the Top 50 in the charts. All were very well received by both the critics and the public who knew the secret. His secret was a brand of late-night rock that had an element of class, not dissimilar at this stage of his career to the early-'80s Dire Straits albums, but totally out of step, and proudly so, with the music of the time – new romantic, power and synth pop. He opened the album Water Sign with the song "Nothing's Happening by the Sea," which was so far laid back it was almost horizontal, with a harmonica instrumental break, and the album closed with a nod to synth pop on the track "Out of the Darkness."