THE LONELY HEARTBEAT

I listen to this album almost at the same time with "Fantasia" which I posted yesterday. I jst need to ask: What rating means to you? I need to ask you this for clarity of how the ratings that I have given you so far through this wonderful site have worked well for you. My chief intent of giving rating is in the same spirit with progarchives guidelines: it helps you determine your purchasing decision on an album. I just need to emphasize this right here because what I am giving you with this review is my opinion about this pre-debut album of Roine Stolt solo album. I say it pre-debut because I have insofar considered that "The Flower King" was his true debut album while the two albums prior to debut "Fantasia" and "The Lonely Heartbeat" were something to do with his previous work with his band Fantasia prior to the debut and The Flower Kings (with "s") band. Back to the issue about rating, please don't get me wrong if I give a two star rating with this album, it is not intended to demean the musicality of this album. It comes back to your chief reason of having this album. If you have been a die hard fan of The Flower Kings, I recommend you to have it. But if you are newbie, please do not start with this.

As I have known the band and Roine Stolt quite sometime ago, it's about time to look back on how it started all. I believe that this release would not be possible if he and the Flower Kings are not as famous as now. But, looking back on how it sounded like at first inception is quite important to me so that I could understand how the talent has grown until today.

It starts with an exploration of alto sax with ambient mood in "Early morning Manhattan" followed with "Mister sunshine" in an acapella singing style followed with a nice stream of music in upbeat music. In a way it reminds me to Dire Straits "Money For Nothing" (a rock hit of 80s). It has elements that later form the foundation of The Flower Kings music. In fact "Hotel Paradox" title track is in similar vein with this. "Goodbye blue Monday" is an R&B track with brass section. "White man of N.Y.C." is a very nice jazz music and practically no components of prog at all. The guitar work and melody of the song are really good. My daughter called this music is similar with Michael Buble's (her favorite singer). "Burning bridges" is another disco track with Stanley Clark bass playing style. "Crawl like an anima" lends the riffs something similar to Yes' "Owner of a Lonely Heart". "I Still Believe" is another R&B with nice guitar fills. "Strange in my own house" is a nice blues outfit that is easy to digest, textured beautifully by guitar work and excellent singing style. "The Lonely Heartbeat" has stunning guitar work.

As I go through the music, most of them have intense R&B and pop components that make me hard to believe that finally Roine found himself fit when he formed The Flower Kings. But before that, he made a wonderful "The Flower King" (without "s") album. Keep on proggin' ..!

Peace on earth and mercy mild - GW

One more obscure recording of Sweden´s most important prog figures to rise in the 90´s. But before Stolt would conquer the prog scene with his Flower Kings, and after he left another seminal prog band of the 70´s (Kaipa), he had a real awful time during the 80´s. Well, almost everybody in prog had a hard time through that period. And mr Stolt was no exception. If on his previous output (1985´s Behind The Walls) it seemed that some big recoding tycoon decided to make him a pop/new wave star, this time around it sounds like someone thought he could be the swedish version of new R&B artists who were having radio hits like Robert Cray and Steve Ray Vaughan.

So this time we have an uneven collection of songs that goes through pop, blues, jazz, R&B and gospel. Even a the Dire Stratis style is thrown in for good measure (on Shine and Ring Of light, for instance). While the overall quality of the songs is much superior to his previous effort (an easy task, I should say), once more several tracks are marred by the typical 80´s production, with those cheesy, ever present plastic synth sounds and drum programming. However, I reckon he was beginning to find his voice: his singing is much more focused and convincing now, and he does sound like Roine Stolt this time. His guitar solos are also excellent. The guy really had the chops to face the challenge of pedaling in the aforementioned styles without making a fool of himself. But don´t expect anything prog here. He was yet to find his own way in 1989.

All in all I didn´t find The Lonely Heartbeat not even nearly as bad as Behind The Walls (again, it was expected). If you like 80´s FM radio friendly rock and R&B, chances are you´ll probalby enjoy this album. But if you´re looking for something prog, just skip all his entire solo discography during that decade. it´s amazing how he would eventually appear with such masterpiece of symphonic prog as The Flower King in a little more than four years after such dubious work that this CD surely is. Besides, he has recently proved he could release a much stronger album in the blues/hard rock style recently (2010´s Wall Street Voodoo), with lots of personality and without the pop elements found here..

Rating: in this site, this is for completionists/collectors/hardcore fans only, in that order. 2 stars.