Last Autumn’s Dream have been producing real quality Melodic Rock for 15 years now, and this is incredibly their 14th album in that time and their first of purely cover songs (though we’ve always loved the bonus tracks on previous releases that sort of give a hint to what we have here). As covers albums go this one is firmly in the ‘influences’ camp – a collection of songs that have inspired the various band members to go on and create the smooth, silky Melodic Rock that Last Autumn’s Dream is known for.
As a collection it’s a mixture of both the rather obvious (though very well done) tracks like Loverboy’s ‘Working For the Weekend’ or The Sweet’s ‘Wig Wam Bam’ (I really wish they’d chosen a less covered Sweet song though) and the obscure: like Headpins’ ‘Just One More Time’ or City Boy’s ‘Heads Are Rolling’ – both of which are great versions.
The best songs of course are those that may well be obscure yet stand on their own merits and maybe even make you want to explore the original further. Front and centre in that category I’d put Angel’s ‘I’ll Bring the Whole World To Your Door’ – a great song by a band that I loved as a kid and whose songs deserve to be covered more. In Last Autumn’s Dream’s hands it’s complete class – like the version they did of ‘Waited a Long Time’ as a bonus track on 2012’s Nine Lives album (not just an Angel cover but also from the same 1979 masterwork ‘Sinful’).
Not everyone of course will have heard even some of the mainstream tracks here: opener ‘If Love Should Go’ by The Streets for example – the band that featured Mike Slamer (who interestingly was also in ‘City Boy’ another band covered here and who also provided the guitar solo on Warrant’s ‘Cherry Pie’) and Steve Walsh of Kansas fame. Then there’s Steve Miller Band’s ‘Jet Airliner’ which a lot of people will have heard but might not know the artist (especially if of a certain age or from outside the US).
The album is fleshed out by some rather well-known bands but less than obvious songs – like Kiss’ ‘All the Way’ a song I always thought sounded like a verse and chorus from different planets, and the lukewarm ABBA cover ‘When I Kissed The Teacher’- and here I’d like to say that its the song that is lukewarm not the execution. Aside from that slight dip in quality the only other dud really is John Miles’ disco hit ‘Slow Down’ which leaves me feeling nothing at all. It’s a horrible song, and an injection of rock can’t save it.
As a closer Bachman Turner Overdrive’s ‘Hey You’ works much better, and like a lot of the songs here displays a real reverence for the original without doing it ‘by numbers’ indeed there’s a surprising amount of love and energy throughout. You’ll love this one.
