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Pride & Joy Music [Release date 23.01.26]
Mikael Erlandsson: 9 solo albums, 17 albums with Last Autumn’s Dream, 10 collaborations (with Tom Galley, Tommy Denander and others). Melody Lane is his 6th (since 2019) with Autumn’s Child, his fourth on the Pride & Joy label.
40+ albums over a 30 year timeline. Lazy or what ?
Once upon a time in the nineties and early 2000s I had the good fortune to write reviews for the now defunct print magazine, Hard RoxX. I made sure I was first in line to review any new LAD album. The styles changed a little from band to band to solo to band again, but the quality of Erlandsson’s music never dropped.
Autumn’s Child is, and has been since its inception, a poppier undertaking than the others. It takes a few tracks to tune in to Erlandsson’s wavelength, but once you’re there, you’re hooked.
The title of lightweight opener, ‘Heartbreak Boulevard’ tells us so much. It is the language of eighties’ AOR. Cliches perhaps, but the words and the music will resound with genre aficionados.
And for anyone who fell out of love with the AOR genre, ‘Pray For The King’s helter skelter rhythms and ‘Lovesong’s soft rocking ambience, reminiscent of Kenny Loggins and Steely Dan at their mid eighties peak, will have you falling for it all over again.
The album peaks around the middle. ‘Singalong’s hooky melodic rock cadences swirl and then solidify into a funfilled, tongue in cheek dancefloor celebration.
But nowhere else does the album so perfectly catch the mood between sadness and sweetness as on the yearning nostalgia of ‘A World Without Love’. There are echoes of power pop bands like Raspberries and Big Star, but Erlandsson softens the arrangement at its edges.
Melody Lane’s real triumph is in capturing the memories that even new melodies provoke, and in making them sound fresh and new. ****
Review by Brian McGowan
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