BOSTON – Life, Love & Hope

BostonBoston’s self-titled debut album is rightly heralded as a melodic rock classic.  The combination of Brad Delp’s soaring voice, a wall of vocal harmonies and the distinctive guitar work of Tom Scholz has allowed the album to (almost) transcend the ages.  While it doesn’t necessarily sound timeless, it certainly still sounds like an album recorded some time after its mid-70s origins, such is its sharpness.  The band’s next works (1978’s ‘Don’t Look Back’ and 1986’s ‘Third Stage’) are almost as good, thanks to Scholtz and his obsession with perfection.   After a long delay, the band returned in the mid 90s for ‘Walk On’, a decent selection of pomp-driven songs with Orion vocalist Fran Cosmo doing a grand job of replacing Brad Delp on vocals.  It mightn’t have quite been up there the Boston of ’76, but then it didn’t pretend to be – it was a good enough record in its own way.  From this point on, very little was heard from the Boston camp until the release of ‘Corporate America’ (featuring both Delp and Cosmo alongside Sholz) in 2002.  It was a record which gathered mixed reviews.  Too much time had passed.

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