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Escape Records [Release date 25.03.22]
‘The Garden’ is the album put together by Bruce Mee (of Fireworks magazine) as a tribute to his mother, who died of cancer in 2020. The studio project is called Circle of Friends because the majority of the singers appearing on the album are personal friends of Bruce and Khalil Turk (Escape Music), and were all willing to help bring album concept to life.
The album has thirteen tracks, of which four are covers, with the remaining nine songs mostly written by Mikael Rosengren and his co-writers. Jaime Kyle brings her own song ‘Take My Love To Heart’ to the album.
The line-up of singers is very impressive including Doro, Jeff Scott Soto, Robin Beck, Darby Mills, James Christian, Robin McAuley and Kevin Chalfant on backing vocals. Musician wise the line-up is equally impressive as it includes Whitesnake’s Joel Hoekstra, MSG’s Steve Mann, Tommy Denander, Eric Ragno and Steve Morris (Heartland, Ian Gillan).
Often an album with a number of guest singers can lack any overall cohesion, not so here, aided perhaps by the fact there is one main songwriter involved. Hard to pick out highlights from the originals as they are all classy melodic hard rock. However, Jeff Scott Soto is up to his usual high standard on ‘Bad Blood’, Jamie Kyle nails her own song ‘Take Love To My Heart’, the Metal Queen Doro on ‘Little Piece Of Heaven’ and Darby Mills on ‘Trick Of The Light’. Pretty darn fine guitar solo on the latter song too.
The cover versions are an interesting bunch. Blondie’s ‘11:59’ sung by Ellinor Asp, is a novel choice avoiding the obvious Blondie classics. Robin Beck is on top form on Abba’s ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’, with her husband James Christian on backing vocals. Love this song but a vision of Alan Partridge always appears in my mind whenever I hear this song…
Kudos for attempting the Blue Oyster Cult classic ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’, which is given a new intro & outro and Robin McAuley was a good choice to tackle this one. The little known Fierce Heart song ‘Never Gonna Make Me Cry’ is a proper ‘wow’ moment, helped greatly by James Christian’s vocal performance.
What a fitting tribute to his mother and a credit to all involved. One of the best melodic rock albums you’ll hear this year. ****
Review by Jason Ritchie
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