More Info: www.fabbox.net
Verdict:A sunny mixture of Westcoast, Pop & AOR.
Fab Box consist of Fabrizio Ugolini, formerly of Italian hard rock band Revenge, and Massimo Bozzi, who has released two solo albums and been involved as producer, arranger and musician with various Italian pop acts. Their shared passion of acts like Toto, Journey, Bryan Adams and Richard Marx brought them together to write songs. Recently they have been involved with LA producer Fabrizio Grossi to write songs for Joseph Williams and Danny Vaughan. As celebration of the 10 year anniversary of this artistic collaboration they have recorded this album.
This album arrived with me just at the same time as the somewhat rare good weather here in Ireland and the overall Westcoast vibe to the album was a perfect match. Normally I dust off my LA Cowboys CD to accompany this sort of weather.
In fact, that is a bit of a simplistic description of the album as there are strong lightweight AOR and even pop themes also on display. Opening track "Tell Her I'm Alright" sets the overall Westcoast vibe rather well. Next track, "Nobody Tonight", had me scribbling down Cutting Crew, Mr Mister and Peter Cox as I'm getting an 80's AOR meets pop feel to the track that crops up again on other tracks such as "The Key". On tracks such as "Inside", "A Matter Of Time" and the Westcoast meets Boyzone "You Are The One" this balance tips toward the pop end of the spectrum.
Around the middle of the album the tracks edge closer to pure AOR with Mark Spiro being a reference point. I like listening to a variety of music, but AOR is like "coming home" for me and it is therefore no surprise that tracks like "Together", "I Still Believe", "Reason Of The Heart" and "Always" are the ones that particularly appealed to me. The version of the album which I reviewed, which is the special digipak edition available at their website, has a bonus track, "Eres mi vida", sung by Francis Benitez on vocals which has a Tina Arena feel.
This album contains an entertaining mixture of lightweight music styles which has made it the perfect accompaniment to sunny weather we have been experiencing recently.
