Month: July 2023

Bon Jovi – ‘The Albums Box Set’ (2017) – Album Review (The Bon Jovi Collection Series)

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We are starting out things a little different. We aren’t starting with the earliest Bon Jovi piece in the collection. We are going to start the Bon Jovi Collection Series with the piece that convinced me to start the series. I picked this up around Christmas of last year and when I had all the album on vinyl, I thought, let’s do it. I took some time filling some holes in the collection and arranging what I wanted to review and now here we are. Currently this collection is going to take some time as there are around 60 pieces to review so this will take over a year to complete so I hope you are along for the ride. We will save the history of the band and how it got started to later. For now, let’s look at this box set in all its glory.

The Box Set was released on February 10, 2017 and was released on both vinyl and CD. I chose the Vinyl collection as I love to have their albums on vinyl. The set carries all studio albums up to that point which means it stops at ‘This House is Not For Sale’. But that isn’t all, it has both Jon Bon Jovi solo albums as well as an “Extra” LP with a bunch of their international B-Sides which is a nice treat. But that is it. There no extra posters, stickers, booklets or anything. Each album though is remastered on 180g LP and the 16 albums are spread over 24 LPs. At the time this was released, 7 of the albums had never been released on vinyl and then you have the “Extra” LP which is the first time this had ever been released. So, for the vinyl collector this was the easiest way to get everything. Now, they did release the albums individually, well the Bon Jovi ones were, I don’t think I ever saw the Jon Bon albums ever in the stores…I mean ever.

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W.E.T. – ‘Retransmission’ (2021) – Album Review (The Jeff Scott Soto Series)

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As we now know as we are now on their fourth studio album, W.E.T. is a culmination of some great artist including Robert Sall of the band Work of Art (The “W”); Erik Martensson of the band Eclipses (The “E”) and Jeff Scott Soto of the band Talisman (The “T”). All three bands are Swedish bands and all on Frontiers so it made it easy to bring these three guys together. Rounding out the band are Magnus Henriksson and Robban Back both from the band Eclipse as well. And a new face to the band with Andreas Passmark (Royal Hunt) will handle the bass duties.

The album was released on January 22, 2021 right slap dab during the COVID pandemic. So, no touring sadly. However, at this point in the pandemic, band’s were still delaying albums and we are so grateful that W.E.T. did not. Their fourth studio album, ‘Retransmission’, sees Erik still at the helm and this time, the guitar is king a little more than it has in the past. But don’t worry, if you are expecting to hear W.E.T., you will in spades as you still get melodic rock, 80’s anthemic AOR and solid music throughout still drenched in keyboards and smothered with great melodies and vocals from the great Jeff Scott Soto. They have become AC/DC in a sort of way with the fact that all the albums sounds the same, but in a very good way. I think people might be upset if they changed their sound, thankfully, they did not. Just punched it up, polished it off and delivered another spectacular release. Let’s see how it holds up.

“Big Boys Don’t Cry” comes screaming out of the gates with its bombastic drums, ear-splitting guitars and as is usually the blueprint, you get both Erik and Jeff on vocals for this first song and it is a scorcher. The melodies and harmonies between the two are better than ever. The anthemic beast of a song shows that W.E.T. have not lost a step in the three years since their last release. They come out swinging with this one.

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My Sunday Song – “Escapism” by Raye (Feat. 070 Shake)

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For My Sunday Song #367, we are now on the 7th selection in the Morgan’s Choice Series. This time around we are talking about the song “Escapism” by British singer Raye which features 070 Shake. The song started off as a huge TikTok sensation and became the third single off her 2022 album, ‘My 21st Century Blues’. The song hit #23 on the Billboard Top 40 and it charted in dozens and dozens of countries. It was written by Raye along with 070 Shakes and Mike Sabath who also handled production.

The song is about escaping from reality after a bad break-up. That escaping deals with unhealthy coping mechanisms including drugs, alcohol and even hooking up with a lot of people. In the lyrics she is hitting the clubs and sitting in the back of a cab doing coke. Within 24 hours after the breakup she is with another man doing God knows what. It is not healthy at all and not a great way to deal with the breakup, but she made a hit song so who can argue with the results.

The song has a strong electronic beat that carries a certain cock swagger. The drums and the bass are turned up almost to a slight distorted level, but that beat will get you moving. There are lots of changes throughout as Raye tackles the lyrics in different ways whether it is a cocky spirited delivery or a soft, vulnerable state and she has a great voice and can handle both perfectly. 070 Shake’s (or Daniella Balbuena’s) vocals pair nicely with Raye’s and she brings that hip hop break that a lot of todays’s songs have, but I don’t think they always need. This works with it or without it in my opinion. This isn’t something I would gravitate towards, but no denying it is a catchy number

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