"Kimball Jamison" album review
Released on: Frontiers Records. Release Date: Available now.
Two absolutely top vocalists join forces to create this special album. The music is great, the vocals - first class, the songs – very good!
The other players involved here though, really deserve name checks, as the music throughout is great!
Besides the obvious two main men, there’s bassist and producer Mat Sinner. On Keyboards and co-production there’s Jimmy Kresic, then all of the guitars on here are presented by Alex Beyrodt who I’ve never heard of before, but he deserves to be remembered AND checked out. Great player indeed!
Last and certainly by no means least is drummer Martin Schmidt, who provides a very strong backbone here!
This album is actually already about four months old, yet I’ve only recently got to start listening to it recently, that tells you how much material is being thrown my way, as I love both these vocalists’ voices.
‘Worth Fighting For’ is the opener here and musically it’s like these two legends fronting Journey, it kicks in and maintains a great up tempo pace, loads of melody with so much music! Great start guys!
Power ballad time in ‘Sail Away’ next and of course it’s very slick, very smooth.
On first listen to the edgy ‘Chasing Euphoria’ I kind of thought perhaps the chorus was a little cheesy, but it’s really not.
It rocks along with urgency with both guys giving it some serious vocal phrasing.
Oh boy ‘Find Another Way’ is another ballad ... I would’ve thought that these days, since this genre doesn’t get the radio airplay it used to, that the need for multiple ballads on an album should not be needed. That said, they do it well, almost into almost Chicago territory.
I’m glad to say that with ‘Get Back In The Game’ the guys pull off another great rocker, following the same idea and flow that ‘Worth Fighting For’ kicked off with. It’s a real Journey style rocker actually. Ironically this is one of those tracks that really sounds like something you know, that you know from somewhere else, but can’t remember what the song was! It’s great though, nice guitar solo here too, well done Alex Beyrodt.
‘I Did Everything Wrong’ is a slower chug along pop rocker, nice groove and very Neal Schon like guitar work.
In ‘Shadows of Love’ it’s got a haunting feel to it as it starts in laid back fashion and then picks up for the pre-chorus and chorus, before each verse takes it down again a bit. Good steady pop rocker type groove.
The pace is picked up again, after a gentle start for ‘Hearts Beat Again’ which is very much a Toto style rocker. Nice!
Then ‘We Gotta Believe’ is a nice steady slow to mid pace slick piece of AOR, kind of sub-ballad turf.
I don’t know but there’s a certain Bon Jovi feel to ‘Kickin’ and Screaming’ in the chorus and it’s build up. Although some of the keyboard stabs remind me of some of the symphonic metal type stuff I’ve heard. It’s a very strong hooky song indeed!
‘Your Photograph’ closes the album and it’s almost soulful at the start before it hits power ballad vibe in the chorus.
Rating: 4 out of 5
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