GOODNIGHT L.A.

Magnum completely lost their identity here. What did they do to Catley's voice? It is hardly recognizable on some songs. The other thing that gave Magnum what little identity they had was the strong presence of keyboards. But the keyboards here are almost completely buried under hard rocking guitar riffs. And this makes it very hard to believe that this is the same band that did Vigilante a few years earlier. Vigilante was very much of its time (1986), Goodnight LA is also very much of its time (1990); the guitars are more distorted, and much more dominant in the mix. But there are not many guitar solos and certainly no keyboard solos (there rarely were on Magnum albums anyway).

All this gives the impression that Magnum was a band in search of an identity; a band with a serious identity crisis. However, on the previous album Wings Of Heaven (1988) we did get to see a more confident Magnum, seemingly at ease with what they were doing. And that was probably their strongest album ever. Unfortunately, they quickly lost it again with this album. It is quite strange that such a strong album as Wings Of Heaven is surrounded by two such weak ones as Vigilante and Goodnight LA.

The lack of identity ensures that Goodnight LA could have been made by any melodic hard rock band around that time. There is too little that tells us that this is Magnum. As if this was not enough, there is a serious lack of memorable songs. I listened to this album three times today and yet I cannot remember any of the songs from it.

An ordinary melodic hard rock album without the melodies!