Album review : STREETLIGHT – Night Vision

March 6th, 2025 by brianmc

Frontiers Music [Release date : 14.03.25]

After an artfully conceived AOR debut in 2024, Streetlight’s trajectory remains on an upward curve.

And, to no one’s surprise, pretty well everywhere you scratch the paint on Night Vision, you’ll find the 1980s underneath.

That said, it’s an inauspicious start. The opener, ‘Long Distance Runner’ seems disappointingly ordinary, but . . . it comes alive in the last minute, when they throw in the all the AOR moves piled up in their kitchen sink armoury. The temperature rises.

Then, the beefed up second track, ‘Captured in the Night’ generates a new impulse and new energy, providing all the urgency and purpose that great AOR needs.

’Sleep Walk’ takes its cue, working up to a multi layered chorus. This is classy, sophisticated stuff, with vocal harmonies borrowed from Brian Wilson.

It’s like the Swedish five piece have taken the AOR/Westcoast template – originally struck by artists like Toto and Steely Dan, polished it up, added a bit of oomph here and there, and are now looking for ways to shape it into a sound that will define them.

You could almost divide the album into three discrete parts.
The first we’ve just described.

The second, shorter, more precise : ‘Learn To Love Again’ and ‘Fly With Eagles’ are AOR versions of Johnny Hates Jazz, where the genre doesn’t really matter, only the songwriting and the arrangement counts. In both cases the music’s melancholy undertow gives them an emotional power, often pursued unsuccessfully by many a rock band.

And the third: The band truly put an indelible Streetlight stamp on ‘Late Night Hollywood’. The piercing harmonies, rampant keyboards and pacey tempo seem to swell the song from the inside out.

‘Straight To Video’ sees them letting loose, indulging in some pacey, shout-it-out rock’n’roll.

And, in an abrupt switch of tone, they close out the album with ‘Where Did Love Go’, an affectionate look back at “yacht rock”, a brand of popular music that took pride in steering well clear of the sociopolitical issues of the day. ****

Review by Brian McGowan

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