Michael Learns To Rock burst upon the world music scene about five years back and brought with them a refreshing new sound. Unfortunately, they seem to have become stuck in that mould - and this album is a good reminder of the fact.
The album is standard MLTR - soft music, sentimental lyrics, all rendered soulfully in the very Danish voice of lead singer Jascha. Most of the songs are decent - there’s “Angel Eyes” and “You Took My Heart Away”, which have heavy overtones of the previous hit “Sleeping Child”. The better numbers, though, are the ones which are slightly peppier, like “One Way Street” and “More than a Friend”; these have very distinctive overtones of Bryan Adams, but are a good deviation from their normal stuff. The rest of the songs are pretty bland and could classify as elevator music.
The album is quite good if you’re a first-time listener of MLTR; for regulars, this is quite a wash-out.
This article was first published on 20 Feb 2001.