Tony Harnell is best known as the front man for TNT and for latter day projects such as Westworld and Starbreaker. I'm familiar with some TNT material with the "Intuition" album being in my collection. For some reason Westworld seem to have passed me by which is surprising given the presence of Danger Danger's Bruno Ravel. More recently I have found both Starbreaker albums to be impressive affairs. For this album Tony is giving us new interpretations of TNT and Westworld material. So some of the original tracks I'm familiar with, others I'm hearing for the first time.
I very carefully described this as new interpretations rather than simply calling this an acoustic or unplugged album because Tony has taken the time to disassemble, strip back and reassemble these tracks giving us some interesting new music rather than simply 'pulling the plug' and playing acoustic versions of the tracks. The first bunch of tracks, which includes a nifty "Intuition", have a sort of mid-West vibe, not a million miles away from the type of material on Joey Tempest's solo albums.
The 50s jazz meets country of Satellite signals that Tony has a few tricks up his sleeve. Next track, TNT's "10K Lovers" gets transformed into a lilting South American jazzy number which is pretty far removed from type of music I normally listen to, but in the context of the album seems perfectly acceptable. Packed into this second half of the album we also get a sombre rendition of Alanis Morrisette's "Uninvited", a Beach Boy type version of "When I'm Away", Blackmore's Night meets The Corrs on the Celtic "Song For Dianne" and the Beatle-esque "Anywhere But Here".
This is a well executed album and Tony has gone to some lengths to step outside his normal sphere of music. The tracks that I enjoyed most were the ones that I was already familiar with, so whilst the album does have appeal as a standalone album, maximum enjoyment will be gained by those pretty au fait with Tony's other work.
Rating: 3 stars
