Rating: RRRRR
Review by Kimmo Toivonen
The second REMEDY album takes me back to the golden era of late eighties and BIG albums. You know, the kind of albums you knew right away after the first spin that it was something special, with a half a dozen surefire hits on it. ”Pleasure Beats The Pain” is like that. Sure, it has a couple of songs I don’t like as much as the others, but it has hits. A lot of hits. Unfortunately it’s unlikely that they’ll conquer the Billboard charts, but in my world the will rule the playlists this summer and onwards.
The first Remedy album was a great one, my album of the year 2022. Usually most bands struggle a bit with their second album, but apparently Remedy didn’t get the memo of ”sophomore album curse”. They have just done it again, releasing a strong contender for this year's best album. Probably they didn't even break a sweat over it, lucky buggers!
Although I said this album takes me back, it's not really a retro-sounding album, the production is up to date and the songs have some rather clever, even unique hooks. I might have mentioned it before, but I hear a little bit of The Rasmus at their best in some of these songs. Then again, I do hear touches of Abba, Bonfire and even Queensrÿche here and there. But most of all, it's Remedy I hear.
The "hits" of the album for me are the first eight tracks, and right now I might say that "Moon Has The Night" could be my favourite, but I really don't know, it might also be "Crying Heart" or "Hearts On Fire". All three come with gigantic choruses, soaring vocals, neat little nuances and tasteful guitar solos. But so do the other 5 tracks...
The somewhat Van Halenesque "Girls Got Trouble" is by no means a bad song, but somehow it stands out as the "obligatory party rocker". I kind of understand its' inclusion and it might be a fun live track to play. "Something They Call Love" is an acoustic ballad, and if you ignore the lyrics, it could be a lullaby. Maybe it's a very personal track to someone and therefore an important piece of the puzzle, but for me it's just okay. The debut had one of the best ballads of recent years in "Sundays At Nine", so they're certainly capable of writing brilliant slower songs. Who knows what they have in the vaults... Anyway, on any scale this is a monster of an album and even with the two last tracks slightly lowering the overall score, I can easily round up my rating to full 5 R's.
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