Overall, it's a good CD. I bought this CD because I love "she" as soon as I heard it. Quite a talented man, seeing he did most of the music. I forget the number of songs (17?) so it's a long CD. Being a huge Queen fan, I found all of the "short" songs a great dedication to Queen, whether is was meant to be or not. You can close your eyes and swear it's Queen, from the harmonies right down to May's guitar sound. The bad part of these "short Queen" songs (1-2 minutes) is that THEY AREN'T LONG ENOUGHT !!! Like I said, being a Queen fan.....
All in all, it's an entertaining CD. Fun to listen to. I would say it's a must have. However, if someone were to ask me if I had any negative reaction whatsoever, I believe the one exception may be the last song, mostly the long beginning of the song, leading up to the piano/vocals. But instead of passing judgement, I'll wait to see what others might have to say. Enjoy...........
Valentine - as in Robby Valentine - is a multi instrumentalist who pretty much did everything on this album except for the drums on a number of the tunes. Though some of the numbers merely have drum programming by our man Robby. Pretty much from the word go the punter is made aware that this is going to be a varied listen and the main influence here seems to be Queen. And that's not exactly the easiest act to follow in the footsteps of. But the connection comes about not only in the fey vocal stylings, the repeated darn near guitar quotes and right down to the twee musicality of proceedings but also in the cherry picking style of the songs themselves. Your best way of catching an earful of this for yourself would be to try to sample tracks 7 - Magnum Opus, track 10 - Magical Memories and track 13 - How Can I Live Without You. The most muscular songs in terms of musical heft are the first and last numbers, though the heft in the last is most effectively used in the opening movement.
Production values are nice but do allow the open and often whimsical music to breath and the booklet comes complete with fully lyrics. As for these, well the album is called The Most Beautiful Pain for a reason. Yep your man Robby likes to sing about love and the attendance or absence thereof, as the case may be. While this will no doubt please many a fan of syrupy AOR (and hey, this thing has been released by Frontiers Records) when you are knocked over the head by the same subject matter again and again over most of the 17 tracks on offer here it can produce a touch of fatigue in the listener.
In summation this isn't an album that is likely to make repeated forays to my stereo. Robby has penned a couple of great tunes here but I can't help but think his talent doesn't extend to writing a whole albums worth of good songs - perhaps he should get back to a band situation. They stylings are a little too all over the place and there are times when the Queen references become more like slavish copying rather than as a starting point. Still, props to the guy for making a record like this in an environment where hardly anyone was likely to care and there is a part of me that is darn glad that records like this get made. Three stars for this album.
