101 south no u-turn

Released: 23 November 2009 Label: AOR Heaven

I have a confession. Sometimes, I like to listen to some mellow, Album Oriented Rock (AOR) of the sort that people like The Eagles, Chris Rea, Dire Straits, Chicago and even Foreigner used to make. Apart from the obvious musical similarities, those bands have one thing in common. They’re not around anymore (OK, apart from Chris hea, who’s touring). So it was rather a pleasant surprise to realise that 101 South are still making the sort of music that led me eventually into the harder and heavier sounds that I enjoy now. Especially since I still like to go and wallow in 1980s AOR every now and then.

So then, mellowness is the order of this album. It’s all laid back, relaxed, easy on the ear, Californian twilight rock music, played just in the last hour or so of the beach bars being open, but maybe too early for restaurants to be plying business. You should be listening to this in either an open top car cruising the boulevards, or sitting at a beach bar with an ice cold beer, watching all the blondes jiggling past.

The band themselves are the result of collaboration between Roger Scott Craig (keys) and Gregory Lynn Hall (vocals). Billy Liesegang, Ian Bairnson and David Pasillas (guitars), Jimmy Turner (bass) and Hans Geiger (drums) complete the line up for this album, together with a special guest vocalist on the last track, Chris Thompson of Manfred Mann fame.

That history really shows in the music. Listening to it (with a bottle of ice cold beer nearby), you get the feeling that all the musicians are playing well within their capabilities, they’re not stretching, or rushing to get to the next riff or solo or break. They’re just floating along, enjoying themselves and letting the music flow. Hall’s vocals are clear, with just an edge of roughness, but winding effortlessly up and down the scales as required. The keys are never very prominent, but just sit in the background providing fill and melody for the guitars.

The only thing in all this mellowness and relaxation, is that it is a bit bland, but that’s to be expected.

As for that last song, Blue Skies, with the former Manfred Mann vocalist Chris Thompson featuring, well, Chris has an astonishing voice, but again, it’s not really stretched on this track. Anyone who has heard his performance on the Jeff Wayne masterpiece War of the Worlds, or any of the Manfred Mann stuff will know that he is capable of more than is being asked for here.

Those minor gripes aside, I like this album immensely, bearing in mind that I’ll probably only play it on those warm summer nights when the days work is done and I can watch the sun going down with some cold beer to hand. So that’ll be about twice a year in this country. On the other hand, I could play it to my dad, and he’ll like it too.

by Alan Thomson