Ten years and five albums isn’t a bad return for any band these days let alone an AOR band from Melbourne Australia,but over the last decade White Widow have proved that it doesn’t matter where you’re from if you make good music then you will get the chances to get it heard.
Five albums in ‘Victory’ their latest album seems to be setting its sights on the same musical territory covered by that first release – it’s an album that appears to have turned away a little from the straight Melodic Rock/AOR of recent albums (especially the slick AOR of their last release ‘Silhouette’) and re-incorporated that ‘Pomp’ element that made their debut stand out. ‘Pomp’ though is dangerous element to mess with and for every Angel or Giuffria there are a hundred bands like Wrabit (unfair as I actually loved them) Starcastle, Zon or Storm. The problem with ‘Pomp’ was always that mix of those volatile elements – the Pretentious, overblown and the bombastic…
My relationship with AOR and Pomp has always been an elastic one, back in the late seventies and early eighties when the scene, you could argue, was at it’s commercial peak I was always little suspicious of the way many of the bigger AOR bands treated their Rock with what I saw as an almost unnatural emphasis on Liberace-like extravagance, unwarranted precision, excessive polish and over-processing so that what came out shone just like everything else did and you were caught in the headlights. And despite all that attention somehow the music didn’t connect with your heart, let alone your soul.
‘Pomp Rock’ I guess was the natural sibling to AOR that had dallied a little with Prog – taking that melodic base and injecting it with so many smooth keys and ‘parping sounds’ that it almost had to be sung through a perfect set of white teeth on a beautiful day in heaven. Teenage angst was nowhere to be seen and so hard rock just seemed so much more exciting and enticing – though conversely Angel ruled the world, and ‘Sinful’ will always sit there in my Top 10 albums of all time!
Those days were also a sea of contradictions – as much as I loved early Toto I hated their commercial peak (‘Hold the Line’ is still one of the finest Rock songs ever, and ‘Rosanna’ never fails to set my teeth on edge); as much as I loved ‘Back on the Road Again’ by REO Speedwagon I hated those chart-topping ballads. I think the turning point for me was actually catching bands live – and I remember seeing ‘Indiscreet-era’ FM playing with White Sister and loving the classy AOR of the headliners and really not understanding why the support wanted to sound like a poor-man’s Angel, still stuck in the 70’s.
What’s all that got to do with White Widdow you may well ask?
Well they seem to have managed to walk that tightrope through that minefield and pluck from all that historical wreckage just the very best bits, this is a daring album that teeters on the edge, it’s heavy with keys but doesn’t eschew the guitars, and the vocals sit just right in the mix.
‘Victory’ eases you in with a lithe Melodic Rocker and is certainly cut from the cloth Gregg chose when he put together Giuffria rather than the white satin of Angel. ‘Fight For Love’ is more subdued and veers into Foreigner territory whilst the single ‘Second Hand Heart’ sounds like something from ‘Living in Oz’ or ‘Tao’ era Rick Springfield.
The interesting aspect for me is the battle between light and shade – the keys and backing vocals which seek to sound anachronistic are often pitted against the guitars which at times sound a half a decade ahead of them, and strangely its a battle that works. Not everything works though I found the languid key-heavy ‘Late Night Liaison’ a little cloying, but that’s a thing called personal taste – everyone else who heard it loved it and that of course is the beauty of music.
Other real highlights here, for me at least, are the wonderful slow-burn of ‘Danced in the Moonlight’; the key-driven ‘Reach Up’ which for me is the song that really strikes that perfect balance (and I love that keyboard break); and the Springfieldesque ‘America.’
Wonderful stuff. Think White Sister meets Starship with elements of Giuffria, Foreigner and Survivor… stirring stuff and more than enough to make you forget the Melbourne weather.
TRACKLIST: 1. Victory, 2. Fight For Love, 3. Second Hand Heart, 4. Late Night Liason, 5. Danced In The Moonlight, 6. Love And Hate, 7. Reach Up, 8. Anything, 9. America, 10. Run And Hide