It is a strong piece of AOR & rock, with an emphasis on more keyboard influenced songs and an modern, but 80's influenced sound.But the production is with 90's values, insuring that this does not sound dated in any way. Any fan of Escape's back catalogue should be pleased to add this to it.Steve Newman produced this album himself, which he has done a good job of. His voice is one I can't pigeon hole, so I will just say that it is quite a deep voice and capable of holding a good melody.In typical grand rock style, the album opens with One Step Closer.This sounds remarkably close to the style of The Distance.
John McCabe's recording of Herbert Howells' clavichord music is a chance to hear some twentieth century music inspired by C.P.E. Bach's favorite instrument. While other composers were re-discovering the harpsichord, Howells' love for early English music and the instruments of two modern clavichord makers led to the composition of the three sets of miniatures: Lambert's Clavichord and Howells' Clavichord Books One and Two. Howells dedicated every piece in each set to a friend, and in the last two sets he even sometimes attempted to put something of the dedicatee into the music, whether it was a description of that person's character or an imitation of a fellow composer's style. Howells' titles, and in many instances the style of the piece, is a reference to the keyboard compositions of the English virginalists of the late sixteenth/early seventeenth centuries. On the one hand, "Lambert's Fireside" and "Goff's Fireside," named after Herbert Lambert and Thomas Goff, the two clavichord makers, are almost completely idiomatic of virginal music. On the other, the meandering tonality of "Rubbra's Soliloquy" and "E.B.'s Fanfarando" marks them as twentieth century compositions.
Between his various standards albums of the '90s and the heavily collaborational Anutha Zone from 1998, by the end of the millennium it'd been nearly a decade since Dr. John's last record of straight-ahead New Orleans R&B. Creole Moon rectifies that situation nicely - it's "a personal interpretation of New Orleans" (as he says in the liner notes), and these 14 vignettes of New Orleans life are soaked in Crescent City soul. Creole Moon is also a return to the sound of his classic mid-'70s records (Dr. John's Gumbo, In the Right Place), right from the spidery electric piano and testifying back-up vocals on the opener "You Swore." Most of his band, the Lower 9-11 Musician Vocaleers, have been playing with him for close to 20 years, and provide solid accompaniment…
It Ain't Easy features a British blues/rock lineup befitting the man behind the Long John Baldry moniker. This album returns Baldry to a decidedly edgier and hipper audience, with a literal cast of all-stars on some of the more adventurous material he had covered to date. This is no doubt due, at least in part, to the involvement of rock superstars Rod Stewart and Elton John. (In fact, John confesses to have taken the last name in his stage moniker from Baldry's first.) Among their contributions to the project, Stewart and Elton divided the production tasks - each taking a side of the original album. Immediately, Baldry sheds the MOR blue-eyed pop soul image. The backing band on Stewart's side include fellow Face and future Rolling Stone, Ron Wood, on electric guitar and acoustic guitarist Sam Mitchell, who appeared on many of Stewart's early-'70s solo albums…