Frontiers [Release date: 12.07.24]
Holding the world in their hands, Mr Big say goodbye to the late Pat Torpey, the band’s drummer, who lost his battle with Parkinson’s disease in 2018.
And after 35 years of flying highs and way down lows, maybe it’s appropriate that the band’s tenth album (their fourth on Frontiers), is designed to be the band’s final flourish, a celebration of a career spent mostly in the headlights. A band famously Big In Japan, and pretty sizeable everywhere else.
Eric Martin, Paul Gilbert and Billy Sheehan now have the exceptionally talented Nick (Genesis/Spocks Beard) D’Virgilio on the drumstool.
Producer Jay (Meat Loaf/Everclear/too many more to list) Ruston’s got a confident touch. He clearly likes working with tonality, and is not afraid to mix musical stylings, often in the same song.
‘Good Luck Trying’ is a provocative opener, a bluesy hard rock way of saying we don’t fit in any pigeonholes.
Wordy pop song lightweight, ‘I Am You’, and the bluesy, smoky balladesque ‘Who We Are’ are unlikely peas in the same lyrical pod. Martin and Gilbert are truly on their game here. “We stumble and fall, we make it through the dark somehow”. Universal truths made personal. Songs ribboned with melancholy and fitted out with memorable melodies. Martin’s rich vocals anchor both songs to solid ground.
This conviction seems to stand up on every track. Gilbert’s endlessly inventive guitar work sprays acoustic strums all across the amped up electrics, creating the kind of light and shade subtleties on ‘As Good As It Gets’ and ‘Frame’, that fit seamlessly with Martin’s aching vocals and grown up lyrics.
There are a few surprises, and even then they do nothing but live up to our expectations. ‘Right Outta Here’ begins with a showy entry of oriental flavoured guitarwork, and then switches to a more mainstream rock’n’roll style, punctuated with contemporary production values. And ‘Sunday Morning Kinda Girl’ reminds us that they’re still in touch with the Green Tinted Sixties. Handclaps and all.
Any Melodic Hard Rock fan knows that Mr Big should have been bigger. And
once you read between the lines here… you can see that they’ve dug down deep, softened their style in places, streamlined their hard rock in others, given their all to their swan song, as if they’re saying, “if this isn’t good enough, well, we did our best.” ****
Review by Brian McGowan
Featured Artist: JOSH TAERK
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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024
In this sequence we play ‘The Best of 2024′ GRTR! reviewer selections
Featured Albums w/c 9 December 2024
09:00-12:00 The Best of 2024 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2024 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2024 (Singer Songwriter)
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