Frontiers [Release date: 12.08.22]
Hydra is a project put together by rock’n'roll impresario, Daniel Flores, built around the songs of Swedish wunderkind, Henrik Hedstrom.
Flores has brought in another highly talented musician, Andy Kravljaca, to sing and add lead and rhythm guitar. Kravljaca has fronted Nergard and Seventh Wonder, so there’s a lot of musical artistry on display here.
A swirl of busy guitars lights the fuse to the punchy Progrock stylings of anti-war opener, ‘Stop The Madness’. After which Point Break settles into a comfortable Soft Rock groove, full of lush, mid tempo tunes, and lots of romantic anguish.
‘Bringing Down The Moon’ and ‘No Lullaby’ mark out Hedstrom’s love of the music of Toto. The melodies are never in your face – the songs’ soft rock shadings and Kravljaca’s smooth tenor underline their sinuous, understated fragility. There’s just not enough oomph to carry the songs over the line in the style we might expect.
The elegant simplicity of the airy, soft rocking ‘Stay A While’ and ‘Forever My Love’ suggest they might just be the best songs Christopher Cross never wrote, forever destined to circle FM Radio airwaves until the end of time.
‘Angela’ and ‘Doors Of Love’ see the band step out of the shadows of the past for a minute or two. Full of warbling keys and sharp axework, the tracks’ hard working, mid tempo rhythms go some way to distinguishing this band from others in the same arena.
The album ends on a particularly high note. Kravljaca’s duet with Elena Valente, ‘To Say Goodbye’, is a slow tempo heartbreaker. Much more sultry and complex than the preceding material, it might have featured somewhere down the tracklist of the “White Nights” or “Dirty Dancing” movies.
It’s not hard to see that Point Break will appeal to lovers of mid Eighties AOR, but it might have a problem with lasting appeal. ***
Review by Brian McGowan
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Power Plays w/c 15 April 2024
ENMY The Ledge (FiXT)
KAROBELA Get Hard (indie)
KATH & THE KICKS Neptune (indie)
THE BEE TELLERS River Poem (Black Sand Records)
LAUREN FREEBIRD Like A Bomb (indie)
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09:00-12:00 The Best of 2003-2023
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2023
14:00-16:00 KATARINA PEJAK – Pearls On A String (Ruf Records)
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