Sunday, May 8, 2011

WILLIAMS/FRIESTEDT: "S/T"




Rating: 5/10

Label: AOR Heaven 2011

Review by Alan Holloway

It seems you can take the man out of Toto, but you can’t take Toto out of the man. Joseph Williams was one of many who went through the Toto revolving vocalist door (although he has now come back again), and here he’s teamed up with easy listening song expert Peter Friestedt to produce an album that should come packaged with a comfy chair and a pair of vibrating slippers.

The biggest problem with this sort of album is that they always see to start with a good, upbeat track, folling you into thinking you’re going to have a cool, summery album. Inevitably this isn’t the case, as most of the album will be slow, boring and devoid of much in the way of excitement, passion or kick ass tunes. “Swear Your Love” starts it off, and it is indeed an upbeat track that’s lightweight but catchy, a nice piece of Westcoast style rock - heavy on melody, light on guitars but happy and fun. Williams is your typical Toto vocalist, with a great voice that drips sincerity on ballads whilst perfectly competent on lighter numbers. Seriously, if all the tracks had been like the first one, I would have adored this album. Unfortunately, although there are some catchy pieces (“Where To Touch You”, “Sometimes You Win” or “One More Night” for example), the album just doesn’t get my motor running. The production is crystal clear, and everyone sounds wonderful, but the songs are generally more middle of the road than white lines. There’s a staggeringly clear Toto influence, and if you are a fan then I suspect you will enjoy this much more that I did. In the end, it’s just too light and insubstantial, lacking any real excitement to be anything more than a nice CD to have on in the background. Toto fans add 3 or 4 to the review total!

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