Melodic Rock 2015
Supergroup realization of one man’s non-claustrophobic vision.
Room Experience
Italian keyboard player Gianluca Firmo hardly envisioned a closed-space embodiment of his ideas when he reached out there for kindred spirits to flesh it all out, yet as far as brainstorming goes the walled-in session might bear a juicy fruit. Which this album surely is – not only because it’s been quite a time since hard rock was so recklessly heavy and not hung on depression, but also thanks to the platter’s array of tuneful hooks – from tasteful bombast of opener “Shock Me” introducing PINK CREAM 69’s David Readman as main singer, up to the songwriter-voiced finale of the piano-led “Only Goodnight.” There’s no shame of applying a pop idiom to the likes of “One Way Out” as memorable choruses serve a resolution to the taut verses.
More so, there’s a nice contradiction between the project’s title and the record’s sunshine feel, so perfectly shaped in the flight of “Rainbow In The Rain” and the lucid “Tomorrow Came” where optimistic harmonies reign and a sax blares with a help of the CHARMING GRACE guests. Luxurious anxiety, shot through with guitars and grounded with an organ, is revealed in the electro groove of “Queen Of Every Heart,” while “Not Time Yet For A Lullaby” lays out the ROOM EXPERIENCE agenda in the catchiest way possible… only to land on a lullaby melody for a coda. So the funk-underpinned “No Sign Of Summer” sounds like another joke, although a wonderful one. So much for indoors life – a whole world is in there.
****1/3
