4.2.12

Sonic Station - 'Sonic Station' (frontiers) 4.5/5

Sonic Station is a new project assembled by Swedish guitarist and songwriter Alexander Kronbrink, and is his attempt to recreate the classic West Coast AOR sound of acts such as Mr Mister, Chicago and Kenny Loggins. To this end he assembled some of the great and good of the Swedish rock scene around him and recorded this the projects debut album.


Now in his drive to recreate the classic soft rock sounds of 30 years ago Mr Kronbrink has delivered the dream perfectly. Using no fewer than sixteen other musicians on the project, including four separate lead vocalists, he has forged a record that is a perfect tribute to those times. I Wish I Could Lie To You - a track that features some excellent vocals from his collaborator Marika Willstedt - has hints of Heart at their most commercial about it, The sax lead Hold On To Me is pure Christopher Cross, The Most Beautiful Fear is a haunting ballad that Foreigner would have sold their souls to have penned, Never Let The Sunshine Die is a cut that wouldn't sound out of place on a classic Toto album.... And so it continues, there's even few couple of nice more uptempo rockier cuts like You Have To Let Me Go and Running Through The Night to keep a bit of beat going and counterpoint the slower tracks.


Now there is nothing here to excite my inner metal head, or titillate my progressive rock side, but as for a slice of nice chilled out late night glass-of-wine-in-a-darkened-room listening this album is pretty cool. in fact I'll go as far to say its one of the best in this genre I've heard for a while now. The whole album intelligent and completely devoid of cheesy cliche, expertly penned by writers who have a real love of this genre and performed by a group of musicians of the highest caliber.


There is still a fair market for this sort of stuff world wide and I can see Sonic Station becoming the Toto of the new millennium.


Very very good indeed


For fans of... Heart, Toto, Xorigin, Work Of Art, Journey, Mr Mister, Christopher Cross, Chicago.....

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