Review by Andy Hawes for MPM
They really don’t come much more 1980s than this! Just one look at the cover of Palace’s fifth album, Reckless Heart, and we are immediately transported back 40 years! A drawing of a scantily-clad blonde with a HUGE Magnum-esque pistol in front of a sunset city-scape tells you all you need to know about the music herein.
Basically, think St Elmo’s Fire, Top Gun, Iron Eagle, Miami Vice, Beverly Hills Cop and a zillion other 80s movies with big soundtracks brim-full of gloriously cheesy and utterly brilliant Pop-Rock/AOR and this’ll put you in the correct ballpark.
Like his last album, One For The Road, that I reviewed two years ago for this very site, Reckless Heart is basically a one-man show with Michael Palace doing absolutely everything. As I think I said last time out, the dude is extremely talented and does an absolutely phenomenal job of everything on the album. However, the potential drawback of being a total one-man band is that you do lose the additional perspective of collaborators and a producer and sometimes quality-control can suffer a bit. Is that the case here? Well, let’s see…
Palace declares that this is the AOR album he always wanted to make, “the missing link between 1985 and 2024” being his bold claim on the promo page for this album. Well, just one listen to the opening and title track, ‘Reckless Heart’ and we are indeed transported back to 1985.
This is a classy slice of AOR in the classic style, with guitars and keys combining to perfection and with a huge chorus hook that borrows heavily from all the great Scandi AOR acts of the 80s. The sound is big and powerful and very authentic, with fine vocals and excellent guitar playing. In fact, the only drawback really is an overly programmed feel to the drums. Now, I don’t know if Michael Palace has programmed his drums or whether they are played with a real kit and simply quantized very heavily, but they certainly have a slightly ‘machine-like’ feel which may alienate some listeners.
‘The Widow’s Web’ continues the theme with a very ‘soundtrack-esque’ slice of 80s AOR which really is chock-full of quite fabulous hooks and once again has a very authentic 80s vibe going on. Mr Palace certainly knows his AOR history and this track is a great lesson in how it should sound! Those keyboards in the chorus really are the business and give the track an early-mid 80s vibe that you don’t often hear any more. The guitar solo is very fine indeed on this track too! A very good track indeed!
‘Back In Your Arms’ is next and is quite magnificent, with the sort of vibe that Work of Art did so well a few years ago and, as such, is kind of a cross between mid 80s Toto and the best of the Scandi AOR acts of recent years. The layers of guitars and keys are beautifully orchestrated and there is a real pop vibe going on throughout. It’s another very good track.
By now it’s pretty obvious what this album is providing and the real question now is around the consistency of the material. ‘Girl Is An Angel’ keeps the energy up and is another track that straddles the grey areas between Pop-Rock and AOR quite beautifully, with Palace stretching his voice a little and with a ton of vocal harmonies to propel the chorus along.
‘You Give Me A Reason To Live’ slows things down a little with a quite delightful intro and verse section with wonderful layers of clean chiming Stratocaster guitar sounds and keys before the tempo explodes into another belter of a chorus in the best tradition of all the classiest Scandi AOR bands from the past 40 years. There are more dynamics in this track which helps with the album’s pacing, as it’s been pretty unptempo to this point and indeed the tempo remains high on the brilliant ‘Back to 85’ which sounds like it belongs on an action sequence in a movie like Days of Thunder or such-like. It has a gloriously retro feel, combined with more of those Work of Art-style arrangements and honestly, it could very easily sit on any of those classic movie soundtrack albums of yesteryear.
The very same could easily be said of ‘For The Love’ which really does pile on the 1980s-isms in the very best way. Michael Palace’s vocals seem to kick into an extra gear here on a track where the keyboards in particular are utterly glorious in a stunningly retro fashion, and that chorus piles on the gorgonzola to absolute perfection – yes, cheesy can be fabulous!
‘Turn This Car Around’ keeps the tempo up and sticks very closely to the 80s soundtrack theme with quite considerable aplomb and this is actually turning out to be one of my favourite tracks on repeat plays.
Well, the last four tracks have proved that there’s certainly no quibble about the consistency of the material thus far, so here’s hoping the final few tracks don’t let the side down. Fortunately, it seems that Palace is on a something of a roll, as ‘Weightless’ tones down the rock just a tad on a brilliant slice of Pop-Rock/AOR that once again uses some lovely dynamics with a ton of space in the instrumentation in the verses before another colossal AOR chorus roars out of the speakers on another track vying for top-spot on repeated plays.
We’re heading for the home-straight now and ‘Move Me’ begins with a sound not a million miles away from that quintessentially 80s British band The Outfield (high praise indeed), and is another proper banger with more hooks that the world’s largest cloakroom! Utterly awesome!
‘Stronger By The Day’ is the final track on the album proper and finishes pretty much where we started with a huge AOR anthem and a chorus that comes straight from the handbook of classy Scandi-AOR hooklines. It’s another absolute belter that you just can’t sit still when listening to,
My review copy of this album ends with a stripped down version of ‘You Give Me A Reason To Live’ which is the Japanese bonus track. It is also a rather delightful change of pace and in some ways would have been better in this format in the main album, as my main criticism of the album as a whole is that it’s all so relentlessly uptempo. A ballad would add a welcome dynamic dimension.
So, is this album “the missing link between 1985 and 2024?” Well, I’m not even sure what that really means to be honest, as there’s a ton of this kind of thing out there that borrows heavily from the glorious days of the 1980s and has done for years. What I can tell you though, is that Palace has created a fabulously retro slice of AOR that is as good or better than anything similar that’s out there at the moment. If you like this sort of thing, then you just have to check it out! It is relentlessly uptempo, has a really ‘up’ and happy vibe throughout and really does take the arrangement ideas and structures from the best 80s AOR and bring it all screaming into 2024 quite wonderfully.
If huge downtuned sludgy metal is your bag, this will probably not light your fire in any way, but for those of us who remember the glory days of the 80s and who still love well-written, well-produced AOR, this is an absolutely essential listen. In my opinion, it’s also a lot better and more consistent than his previous offering (which I revisited prior to writing this review.) It’s certainly an album tailor-made for blasting in the car on those sunny summer days. It’s out on Frontiers Music s.r.l. on 12th July. Buy, stream it and play it loud!
Pre-order “Reckless Heart” HERE
