Newman
Siren

Newman’s new album seems to be a meeting with a femme fatale, a siren. The band has many albums behind them, their latest album took us to the stars on the southern skies. That album had an observatory on the cover, one that I never was able to place. The cover art was quite nice, this album’s cover art is great and inviting, all one hopes for with these kinds of lovely cover arts is that they have the album to show for it. This is actually the tenth album from Newman so I suppose that they know what they are doing, the latest album was good but at the same time it was a quite ordinary album. Until I took a listen to it last week I could not recall any song from that album and now about a week later I cannot recall any song either. I think we could state that last time Newman did a good but anonymous album, so what about this one with the lovely artwork?

It is an album with melodic rock or AOR if you prefer that term, it is songs with catchy choruses and distinct melodies and structures. They seem to subscribe to the heavier kind of the AOR, kind of reminds me of the second album by W.E.T. that was released earlier this year. Maybe I should have added them as a similar bands but it was too easy to just take those from the previous review and they are not wrong either. Newman does not have that high pitched vocals of some AOR but rather a vocal style that is a bit more normal singing voice, he reminds me a little about Jeff Scott Soto for those who cares for comparisons. The sound is good and powerful as well and the catchiness is invigorating and it feels a lot more modern that what we got last time around. Let us say that it sounds like AOR at its best, kind of like the best bands do it today.

It is a great album, I love the catchy songs and the variation over the twelve tracks is good. The album is still a tad on the long side being fifty six minutes long, it is good enough to work for the entire playing time even though it is slightly long. I think they could have cut a away a pair of songs to make the album even better. I find it just too bad that too many bands don’t understand the fact that an album playing for an hour is too long. Nevertheless, I really enjoy this album despite the long playing time, it is just so catchy and the songs flow really well. The vocals are excellent, it is all there. Despite me being very unbiased in all my reviews I have to say that I wasn’t expecting much from this album, all the better that I got a lot more than I was expecting. Pleasant surprises are a lot better than those that are opposite to that.

There are many good songs on this album but there are three that stands out a lot for me, they stand out as something quite brilliant in fact. These tracks are the title track Siren, the third track Arcadia and Feel Her Again which are all brilliant as well as memorable tracks. I really enjoy these tracks, but I do also enjoy the entire album. I guess a femme fatale makes wonders for an album as this is a great one, well worth looking closer at if you like AOR or melodic hardrock. Let me just end with recommending this album, it is great.

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