Dare - Calm Before The Storm
Walk On The Water
Some Day
Calm Before The Storm
Rescue Me
Silence Of Your Head
Rising Sun
Ashes
Crown Of Thorns
Deliverance
Still In Love With You
Label: MTM Music
Producer: Darren Wharton
Year: 1998
Duration: 57:30 m:s
Review date: August 1998
Finally the rumours come true - new Dare product is upon us. Should we be kneeling before what some consider one of the Gods of AOR? The debut album, Out Of The Silence, is widely regard as one of the best, if not the best, British AOR albums from the 80's. It certainly is one of my favourite albums.
In my case OotS has a little story associated with it. A few years back I was determined to convert my sister to listening to some 'decent' music. I used to record tapes and send them to her. I stopped after a while amid very little positive feedback. Years later, my sister and her husband were visiting and on this occasion they had bought the car over with them. During the visit we were heading off somewhere in their car. I got in the back seat, and we moved off. The car stereo was switched on and something very familiar came on. I said I liked the music. She replied that I should like it because it was the Dare tape I had given her. She then went on to explain how much she like the album and played it quite frequently. So Dare succeeded where Journey, Survivor etc had failed.
Dare's follow up, Blood From Stone, was more guitar orientated and panned by the critics. I gave it a miss until quite recently when I picked up a vinyl copy at a bargain price. Still haven't listened to it yet due to a fault in my amplifier with the record deck pre-amp. After the lengthy absence, Darren Wharton has assembled a new Dare, and Calm Before The Storm marks their return.
Walk On The Water is a good start. The keyboards & Darren's great voice, the classic Dare sound established on the first album is still there. Darren has got one of the most emotive, richest voices around and he conveys a passion in the music that most vocalists can only dream about. The band still manages to create a good balance between guitars and keyboards. The classic Dare sound in maintained throughout the album. The best way of describing the whole album is to say that the band has adopted a more mature attitude toward the music. The songs have a relaxed, effortless feel to them. I've seen some reviews where Pink Floyd has been used as a reference point for the album's keyboard sound.
The first time I listened to this, I was also reading a book and wasn't paying that much attention. The album kinda washed over me. On the second listen through I kept having to check the CD player display to check if it had moved onto another track. The song structure and tempo doesn't vary that much. And therein lies the basic problem with the album - the lack of variety. Maybe Darren is remembering the bashing the critics gave the second album and there has been a deliberate attempt to recapture the sound of OotS. I get the feeling that the song writing and track selection has been restricted too much by this decision. What we end up with is a set of generic Dare songs that don't quite capture the magic that was OotS. That's not to say that CBTS doesn't have it's highlights - Walk On The Water, Calm Before The Storm and Silence Of Your Head A Break in the formula is provided by the cover of Thin Lizzy's Still In Love With You.
After listening to this album, I put Out Of The Silence in the player. IMHO, it blows this one out of the water. My final thoughts on this album are that although it is a good enough album, I can't help but be a little disappointed. Because I love OotS some much, the standards I expect from Dare are higher than most other bands.
The news is that Dare have got another album's worth of new material and yet another new Dare album is in the pipeline - possibly later this year. I'm hoping that this album really is the 'calm before the storm' and that the next album is going to blow me away.
Rating: 7/8
