ALL ACCESS: Reb Beach

CD Review: Winger – Better Days Comin'

Frontiers Records

All Access Rating: A-

Winger - Better Days Comin' 2014

Winger's Karma has decidedly taken a turn for the better. Once bashed by critics, constantly derided on "Beavis and Butt-head" and symbolically trashed by Metallica in the video for "Nothing Else Matters," where Lars Ulrich tosses darts at a poster of Kip Winger, these '80s purveyors of melodic metal had seen their career trajectory crash and burn in the '90s. And then grunge came along and finished the job.

Their reputation shot to hell, Winger disbanded in 1994, but the story doesn't end there. A damn sight more intelligent and musically sophisticated than the hair-metal crowd they ran with, a resilient Winger reunited in 2001, and eight years later, intent on restoring their good name, they issued Karma, their fifth studio album.

Unexpectedly heavy and disarmingly alluring, with a series of intricate progressive-rock instrumental passages, Karma was remarkable, a stunning reminder of what Winger was capable of when properly motivated. Out via Frontiers Records, Better Days Comin' is more of the same, and perhaps even more dynamic than its much-praised predecessor.

Cementing its reputation as the "Dream Theater of pop-metal," Winger's compositions are artfully sketched out on Better Days Comin', where they trot out the sweeping, atmospheric epic "Out of this World" as the album's closer, its moody clouds pierced by the lighting bolts of a spectacular guitar solo. Guitarists Reb Beach and John Roth are as sharp as ever here, their byzantine leads and riffs biting down hard on sizzling, irresistibly crunchy rockers such as the gritty "Rat Race," the lust-filled "Midnight Driver of a Love Machine" – which has a memorable little earwig of a chorus – and the grinding "Another Beautiful Day."

Strangely colorful and maneuvering in the odd time signatures of a band like Yes, "Tin Soldier" weaves through prog-rock's twisting back roads and takes in beautifully diverse, ever-shifting instrumental scenery, while occasionally encountering slight dissonance. On the brighter, funkier title track, Winger embraces its inner Sly and the Family Stone and shining optimism, before settling into the drifting, Beatlesque psychedelia of "Be Who You Are, Now."

The genius of Winger is that they make challenging music that's also warmly human and accessible, all of it consisting of the tricky, yet powerful drumming of former Dixie Dreg Rod Morgenstein, silvery synthesizers, sure hooks and Kip Winger's gripping vocals. It seems Beavis and Butt-head had them all wrong.
– Peter Lindblad

CD Review: Whitesnake – Made in Britain/The World Record

Frontiers Records

All Access Review: A-

Whitesnake - Made in
Britain/The World Record 2013

David Coverdale is not a man without a country. He calls two of them home.

Always the charming rascal, with lust in his heart, a bawdy sense of humor and the restless, romantic heart of a drifter – the type of character he seems to identify with the most – perpetually looking for true love, Coverdale is English through and through, even if he now has dual citizenship in the United States. He probably stills takes his tea in the afternoon.

Taken literally, the title to the new package of rousing live recordings from pop-metal warhorse Whitesnake is self-explanatory. Undoubtedly it refers to material culled from a massive 2011 tour that included nine sold-out U.K. shows and as many as 87 other concerts from around the globe for the boisterous, pulse-pounding Made in Britain/The World Record, but it could just as well describe Coverdale the man – worldly, cultured and yet clearly a product of his native environment.

Ever the likeable rogue, Coverdale is in his element on the 25-track, two-disc Made in Britain/The World Record, singing with surprising clarity and as soulfully as ever – especially on wistful, beautifully rendered versions of “Fare Thee Well” and a softly acoustic “One of These Days,” the warm rasp in his voice dripping with nostalgia and longing. Time hasn’t ravaged his voice one bit; it still rings out clearly amid the bluster and charged electricity this Whitesnake outfit brings to classics like “Fool for Your Loving,” “Bad Boys” and an exuberant, testosterone-fueled “Slide it In” that practically reeks of cheap sex – just as Coverdale intended.

Radioactive meltdowns occur as Whitesnake takes on Deep Purple’s “Soldier of Fortune” and a satisfying medley of “Burn” and “Stormbringer” to end the set, but they mean business when they grind away, like a desperate stripper short on rent money, in “Lay down Your Love” and “Snake Dance.” Much like those two STD-infested sonic brothels of pure bluesy nastiness, both of them sleazier and more infectious than the originals, “Can You Hear the Wind Blow” certainly smolders and “My Evil Ways” smokes, with mean, biting riffage courtesy of guitarists Reb Beach and Doug Aldrich, whose slide guitar work in the intro to “My Evil Ways” has an edgy drawl and sharp aspect to it.

Without their heaviness, their feel, their stylistic diversity, their vibrant tones and rich variety of orgasmic solos, Made in Britain/The World Record wouldn’t be nearly as vital or as fiery, and when melody and harmonies are called for, as they are on “Here I Go Again,” “Love Ain’t No Stranger,” “Is This Love” and “Give Me All Your Love,” Beach and Aldrich play with style and taste, making their presence known but not in an overbearing manner. The songs are allowed to breathe, as the six-string killers sneak around stealthily under dark, spellbinding atmospheres, like that which envelopes parts of “Still of the Night.” They make the epic arrangements of “Forevermore,” off the 2011 album of the same name, soar, but without the remarkably dynamic drumming of Brian Tichy, a definite star in the making, they would go nowhere.

A worthy and quick successor to Made in Japan, an equally dazzling, if not quite as expansive, Whitesnake live album released earlier this year, Made in Britain/The World Record will seduce and overpower longtime fans and new converts alike with superb sound and indefatigable instrumental vigor. http://www.frontiers.it/

– Peter Lindblad