NEON

My first impression of this new group fronted by ARENA guitarist John Mitchell was that this was nothing for me. I usually don't like this kind of noisy guitar pop a la RADIOHEAD and U2. I listened to it a couple of times though, and to my surprise I started to like it more and more. I recognised that some of the songs such as "Quietly", "Mary Jane", "Aeroplane", "Immaculate", "Staring At The Sun", "Static" and "The Tide", contained really good catchy melodies with hit-potential that you can't refuse to sing-a-long to.

This is their debut album and John is responsible for the main part of the song writing. Of course he plays the guitars and he is also handling the lead vocals really well. Besides this he is also participating in the producing and mixing of this album. Even though this is a band production it could easily be a solo album from John Mitchell. This is far away from the progressive symphonic music he is playing in ARENA though.

If you like progressive and symphonic rock and wants some contrast to that music, I suggest that you buy this album. It's a good choice if you're open minded to alternative rock.