It is not often that I get a pure old style AOR album to review. With Prime Suspect that is definitely the case. In terms of heritage, we've got Daniele Liverani, Tommy Ermolli and Dario Ciccioni from Khymera, Olaf Senkbeil from Dreamtide, with Mauro Catellani completing the line-up. On the songwriting front we have got mainly Liverani plus Christian Wolff contributing a couple of songs.
The album is very much an AOR album, but with a bit of Westcoast thrown in to increase the pink and fluffy factor. Khymera are an obvious point of reference, as well as Last Autumn's Dream.
This is one of the those albums which whenever it comes up in my iPod playlist I think, "Oh, what is playing now, it is good". Quite a few of the songs on this album, hit a sweet plot for me. For example, the first three songs all got above average ratings from me. Then, the ballad, "I Never Knew", hits a bit a low point and I find myself getting bored towards the end of this overly long song. Having lost my interest, the album struggles to impress with a batch of songs which I have simply tagged 'pleasant listening'. Penultimate track, "So Strange", captures my interest again. The album closes with the Rainbow-ish "Watch Me".
This is an album on which Prime Suspect show a lot of promise, but somehow don't quite deliver. It is one of those albums that you think is quite good when you are listening to it, but doesn't have enough memorable songs to make it anything other than an occassional visitor to your HiFi speakers.
Rating: 3 Stars
