The word for today, O Ye DV Faithful, is “comeback.” Can we all say it? COME-back. Good job.
A comeback is what happens when someone or something you think is utterly and completely dead — so hopelessly out of style that it’s not even amusing for a clever, hip retro reference — suddenly attempts to resurface back into the limelight. The past few decades have given us several successful comebacks: Elvis’ 1968 TV special, the unforeseen rebirth of Robert Downey Jr.’s acting career, the fact that Joe Biden is US Vice-President. These are comebacks that, at least so far, have been relatively entertaining and bearable.
As a counterpoint, we have Night Ranger’s 2008 release, Hole In The Sun.
Look, I’m not a hair band hater. I grew up in the ‘80s, for gods’ sake. In truth, I kind of wanted to like this CD, but…um….well, so much for THAT idea. I can’t even begin to say where it went wrong; the musicianship is dated, the production and engineering are flat and uninteresting, and the songs contain such a high proportion of clichés that I checked to see if they’d been jointly written by Karl Rove and Stephanie Meyer. There are a couple of brief signs of life — “There Is Life” and “Fool In Me” proves that whatever else Night Ranger can’t do now, they can still sing harmony, but on the whole (ha, I made a pun.) Hole In The Sun is pretty abysmal.
The straw that put the proverbial camel in traction is that they chose to end the CD with two acoustic versions of past hits, “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me” and “Sister Christian.” Good job, guys. Give us two of your songs that were halfway decent (I’m sure I got lucky at least once with “Sister Christian” playing in the background) to remind us how much this current crop of songs suck. Who thought up that particular piece of marketing genius?
Hole In The Sun? More like Black Hole In Your Stereo. Run away. Very fast. In the opposite direction.
