THE NIGHT FLIGHT ORCHESTRA – Sometimes The World Ain’t Enough (2018)
Swedish classic rock supergroup THE NIGHT FLIGHT ORCHESTRA — featuring members of Soilwork and Arch Enemy — will release its fourth studio album, “Sometimes The World Ain’t Enough“, on June 29 via Nuclear Blast.
If you aren’t familiar with their previous records, The Night Flight Orchestra are like a time capsule buried in the mid 1970’s, only to be unearthed some 40 years later. Imagine yourself dusting it off, opening the box and peering inside.
You find a record called Sometimes the World Ain’t Enough that’s never been heard before. You then delicately take it out of the sleeve, pop it on the turntable and crank the volume. What emanates from the speakers is like REO Speedwagon, Deep Purple, Supertramp and Foreigner, all shaken together in a potent, day-glo cocktail.
The songs on “Sometimes The World Ain’t Enough” are ridiculously catchy – and cheesy – but in the most fun of ways. The musicianship is absolutely top-notch throughout and the production crystal clear and the vocals clean and strong. Due to the clarity of the voices, the lyrics are easy to make out making a singalong an absolute breeze.
Highlights for me include album opener “This Time” which could have been a track from Perfect Strangers era Deep Purple (although with more than a hint of the opening of “Fireball”) mixed with latter-day Rainbow. Terrific opening track which should kill live onstage.
Title track “Sometimes The World Ain’t Enough” is the ultimate pop rock type song. With a huskier vocal than the rest and an extremely bouncy chorus which has a hook large enough to catch the biggest of whales, this is joyous. Parping keys and melodies but yet with great guitar soloing to keep in on the right side of rocking.
“Speedwagon” is another track that merges that ’80s pop rock with hard rock. Not sure if this is a direct name check of the band of a similar name, but the guitar at one point is all in the ‘Wild Frontier’ Gary Moore type way.
Actually there’s an impressive mix of styles on this new album too. “Can’t Be That Bad” is a glam rocker and proud of it, followed up by “Pretty Thing Closing In” which comes on shimmering as a disco ball, for something as hip shaking as The Stones’ “Miss You” and on an album that is as choc full of brilliant songs, then “Barcelona” might be the best. The harmonies on this one are not of this world.
They even manage something a little more understated before the end – “Winged And Serpentine” still has huge chorus and a lead guitar that FM would kill for, but on this record it counts as stripped back.
That is not, through, an epithet you can apply to the last song and if the only thing that this collection lacked was a prog rock freak out, then then “The Last Of The Independent Romantics” – all nine minutes of it – remedies that just perfectly.
The whole album is just the sound of musicians doing what they love, with the shackles off and it sounds wonderful. If your fists aren’t in the air throughout most of “Sometimes The World Ain’t Enough” then you don’t deserve fists, in fairness.
Love these guys.
Highly Recommended
01 – This Time
02 – Turn To Miami
03 – Paralyzed
04 – Sometimes The World Ain’t Enough
05 – Moments Of Thunder
06 – Speedwagon
07 – Lovers In The Rain
08 – Can’t Be That Bad
09 – Pretty Thing Closing In
10 – Barcelona
11 – Winged And Serpentine
12 – The Last Of The Independent Romantics
Bjorn Strid – Vocals
Sharlee D’ Angelo – Bass
David Andersson – Guitars
Richard Larsson – Keyboards
Jonas Kallsback – Drums
Sebastian Forslund – Guitars, Percussion
PRE ORDER:
www.amazon.de/Sometimes-World-Enough-Flight-Orchestra/dp/B07CJ315PP
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