With no record companies ever breathing down his neck for a follow up to a hit album, singer-songwriter Jeff Cannata has always been left to his own devices to make records in his own time. While this has meant that he hasn’t always been particularly prolific – with just a couple of albums per decade to his credit since the early 80s – you could never say his work was shoddy. Whenever an album with Cannata at the helm appears, you can be assured it’ll be filled with shiny, multi-layered goodness…and 2013’s ‘Harlequins of Light’, released under the Arc Angel moniker, is no exception.
Tag Archives: aor
SNOWFALL – Cold Silence
In the noughties, Norwegian hard rock band Winter Parade released two albums for two different independent hard rock labels: while ‘Midnight Paradise’ [MTM Records, 2002] and ‘Two’ [Perris Records, 2008] were a huge commercial success, both found a cult audience. Following the band’s demise, bassist PB Riise teamed up with guitarist Tore Meli and Coldspell drummer Perra Johnson to form the core of Snowfall, a band whom – given their heritage and past links – may, on the surface, be dismissed as just another Scandinavian hard rock band.
N.O.W. – Bohemian Kingdom
Under the creative guidance of bassist Alec Mendonca and boasting the vocal prowess of ex-Unruly Child vocalist Philip Bardowell, N.O.W.’s 2010 debut album ‘Force of Nature’ had the makings of an cult AOR classic. It had the well arranged tunes; it had some strong choruses. On the surface, the album had the potential to be very good, but was sadly marred a little due to demo quality recordings (parts of the album were even mastered at different volumes).
PLAYER – Too Many Reasons
Those of a certain age should already be familiar with some of Player’s previous work, since the pop-rockers scored a huge US hit in 1978 with ‘Baby Come Back’, a track which even entered the UK chart peaking just inside the top 40. In their 70s heyday, the band toured with Heart, Boz Scaggs and even scored a place as support band for the slightly worse-for-wear Eric Clapton on his ‘Slowhand’ tour.
DIAMOND DAWN – Overdrive
Sometimes it feels as if half of Sweden were raised on Journey and Survivor and in AOR terms have chosen to keep the dream alive (to borrow a phrase from an old Now & Then Records sampler) with their own punchy melodic rock bands. For those who’ve enjoyed the melodic rock and AOR over several decades, quite understandably, many of these bands have felt somewhat “second division” (and most of those in turn have seemingly signed to Escape Music). There have, however, been a couple of bands whose early works could stand proudly against releases from AOR’s eighties heyday. Both Work Of Art and Wigelius have wowed genre buffs with their near perfect records between 2010 and 2012; joining them in the early part of 2013 is Gothenberg’s Diamond Dawn, whose debut release ‘Overdrive’ is rather splendid.