Thrills - Front Page News
#519
1981 Housekeeping
The Thrills
Front Page News
Genre: Styx was very influential, eh?
3.75 out of 5
Highlights:
Don’t You Know
Tonight
Explorer Time
All hail, Tony Monaco.
All too often a power rock quartet with a big rock sound gets that sound softened by keyboards or they take such a focus that you just wanna pull out a Yes record instead. But Monaco knows what he’s doing. Whether it be hyper-synths or building out a fuller sound, or simulating that B3 sound (not really but that’s what he’s approximating, Tony is there for this band.
With the multi-layered backing vocals and the power rock sound they could be a band covered by (here we go again) Dirk Diggler, but, instead, it comes across as a band shooting for the stars and just missing that ring.
Michael Frenchik, who co-wrote Lionel Richie’s “Dancing on the Ceiling” produced this and I’m actually quite curious as to why he didn’t get more assignments. He understands how to get the sweet sweet Power Rock sound out of this thing. It’s crisp and exciting. Listen to “Tonight” and tell me that you wouldn’t put that on a Rock of the 80s Playlist.
Fuck it, I’m making this a “Discovery” because I love this kind of shit. Ballads and all. While I’m not highlighting it, “Take a Bite” could have been and should have been a Power Ballad hit in 1981 and I’ve “loved” it on Apple Music.
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