Brett Walker - Lift Off

1. Rain In My Heart
2. Not About To Give In
3. Everybody Loves To Win
4. No One Left To Blame
5. You Were Meant To Fly
6. Long Way Down
7. Far Cry
8. Don't Mean Much
9. Walking In My Sleep
10. It Looks A Lot Like Rain
11. Fooled Again
12. It's Coming Back To Me
13. Travelin' Blues
     

Album Cover:

Total Playing Time: 51:04 m:s

Review date: 02/02/2000

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On this album Brett performs all of the vocals and instruments, apart from the drums which are performed by Tommy "Mugs" Cain, David Prater and Pat Leon. On the songwriting front, John Purdell, Jeff Paris, Carl Dixon and Timothy Drury help out with co-writes. Style wise, this is lightweight semi-acoustic pop-rock with a more AOR feel than the previous album. The second tune is all about the pressure within the music industry for an artist to follow a musical direction that is fashionable and trendy. Well, Brett's own views on the subject are that you should follow your heart and he has resisted the urge to change style or to pander to those who would like to see a carbon copy of the debut.

One of the places where I find time to listen to music these days is in the car and the majority of my time with this album has been in the car on the journey to and from work. It is a short journey and I've been listening to the album in batches of 2 or 3 songs. Listening to the album this way I was impressed. However, when I bought the album into the house and sat down to listen to is all the way through, it suddenly struck me how similar many of the songs sound. The majority of the tunes could be described as semi-acoustic mid-tempo fairly laid back tunes. There a few variations on the theme as some tunes have bit more of an edge to them (Rain In My Heart, Everybody Loves To, to name a couple). Moving the opposite direction, the gentler songs never quite become ballads, things just slow down and the arrangement gets sparser (No One Left To Blame & Walking In My Sleep). 

However, it you take the songs on an individual basis ( or in groups of 2 or 3 as I did when listening on my way to work), there aren't many that fail to impress. "Far Cry" is a tune that is an instant winner and is the highlight of the album for me. "It Looks A Lot Like Rain" is another good song that was actually written for a country artist, but which fits in with the rest of the album. "It's Coming Back To Me" is a good song which Brett describes as one of his favorites from all the songs he has written. Other tunes worthy of a mention are the Beatles/Cheap Trick influences opener "Rain In My Heart" and the "You Were Meant To Fly" & "Long Way Down" duo which both have a bit more urgency about them.

If you nip in, an grab a listen to a couple of songs every now and then, you're going to enjoy the album. However, longer listening periods will give a 'ho-hum' reaction.