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Frontiers [Release date 23.08.24]
Few musical artists get the chance to rerecord their old material.
Still fewer improve upon the originals.
White Lion’s material usually had more to say than your average rock song, lyrically it was more illustrative in its themes and concepts.
Back in the eighties, while their peer group were pouting and swaggering around them, singer/songwriter Mike Tramp was talking up issues, large and small. From war dead (All The Fallen Men) and apartheid (Cry For Freedom), both featured on Volume 1 last year, to more war dead (El Salvador) and even more war dead (Road To Valhalla) here on Volume 2.
Worthy, yes, but unlikely chart material you would have ventured.
The remaining tracks on this second volume focus on what goes on inside our head rather than outside.
To begin with though, the album bursts into larger than life with Tramp’s more considered version of ‘Lights & Thunder’, a song allegedly inspired by Led Zeppelin’s ‘Achilles Last Stand’.
Tramp partners with guitarist, Marcus Nand, in recreating a soft centred hard rock song, then adding to it. Something that is both melodic and muscular, a version with a greater sense of range and depth than the original.
Then there’s your actual upbeat love songs, ‘Til Death Do Us Part’ and ‘You’re All I Need’, both of which might have sounded dated, but now, creditably, sound fresh and new. Thanks to Nand’s sympathetic axework and the maturity that has grown into Tramp’s vocals.
Of course, the socially marginalised and the weightier issues of loneliness and grief have their moments, like ‘Out With The Boys’, ‘Lonely Nights’ and the very personal tribute to Tramp and bandmate Vita Bratta’s youthful friendship, ‘Farewell To You’.
Tramp walks an emotional tightrope, knowing that the years have loaned his voice an edge, adding heft and clarity to his songs, and perhaps more importantly, the ability to convey this to the listener.
You can almost imagine his audience leaning in closer. ***1/2
Review by Brian McGowan
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