SHORTS

Shorts is the sixth studio album from Danish act Burnin´ Red Ivanhoe. I haven´t heard their fifth effort from 1974 called Right On, but I´m sure that Shorts is in a very different style because this album truly belongs in the eighties.

I don´t know if the original LP version only had ten songs as it is stated here on PA but the CD version that I have is a double CD. The first CD contains the same ten songs that were on the LP version while the second CD contains the same songs but now with English sung lyrics. The first CD has Danish sung lyrics.

The music is far from the experimental Jazz/ Rock style Burnin´ Red Ivanhoe is generally known for and I´m sure that fans of the first three and most famous albums would cringe with embarrasment if they heard Shorts because this is bad eighties AOR if I´m being nice and really bad AOR if I´m not. You can still hear Karsten Vogel´s saxophone playing here and there but it´s about the only thing that links this album to Burnin´ Red Ivanhoe of the seventies. What a shame. This is such a cheesy album full of simple pop tunes with trivial arranged instrumentation.

The musicianship is good, but it´s no surprise if you´ve heard their albums from the seventies.

The production is a horror of an eighties production. Just listen to that terrible drum sound.

This is a terrible disappointment for me and even though I read on the inner sleeve to Burnin´ Red Ivanhoe´s debut album M144 that the eighties weren´t very good for the band, I imagined that their excellent music just wasn´t inn at the time, but sadly it´s the other way around. The music was simply too bad to be enjoyed by anyone at the time. There is literally nothing I enjoy on this album and even though the musicianship is good I can´t give this album more than 1 star. BIG disappointment. I can highly recommend that you stay away from this one and purchase one of the first three albums from the band instead.