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Roine Stolt - The Lonely Heartbeat CD (album) cover

THE LONELY HEARTBEAT

Roine Stolt

 

Symphonic Prog

2.02 | 22 ratings

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Tarcisio Moura
Prog Reviewer
2 stars One more obscure recording of Swedenīs most important prog figures to rise in the 90īs. But before Stolt would conquer the prog scene with his Flower Kings, and after he left another seminal prog band of the 70īs (Kaipa), he had a real awful time during the 80īs. Well, almost everybody in prog had a hard time through that period. And mr Stolt was no exception. If on his previous output (1985īs Behind The Walls) it seemed that some big recoding tycoon decided to make him a pop/new wave star, this time around it sounds like someone thought he could be the swedish version of new R&B artists who were having radio hits like Robert Cray and Steve Ray Vaughan.

So this time we have an uneven collection of songs that goes through pop, blues, jazz, R&B and gospel. Even a the Dire Stratis style is thrown in for good measure (on Shine and Ring Of light, for instance). While the overall quality of the songs is much superior to his previous effort (an easy task, I should say), once more several tracks are marred by the typical 80īs production, with those cheesy, ever present plastic synth sounds and drum programming. However, I reckon he was beginning to find his voice: his singing is much more focused and convincing now, and he does sound like Roine Stolt this time. His guitar solos are also excellent. The guy really had the chops to face the challenge of pedaling in the aforementioned styles without making a fool of himself. But donīt expect anything prog here. He was yet to find his own way in 1989.

All in all I didnīt find The Lonely Heartbeat not even nearly as bad as Behind The Walls (again, it was expected). If you like 80īs FM radio friendly rock and R&B, chances are youīll probalby enjoy this album. But if youīre looking for something prog, just skip all his entire solo discography during that decade. itīs amazing how he would eventually appear with such masterpiece of symphonic prog as The Flower King in a little more than four years after such dubious work that this CD surely is. Besides, he has recently proved he could release a much stronger album in the blues/hard rock style recently (2010īs Wall Street Voodoo), with lots of personality and without the pop elements found here..

Rating: in this site, this is for completionists/collectors/hardcore fans only, in that order. 2 stars.

Tarcisio Moura | 2/5 |

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