With each passing year, it never ceases to amaze me Europe’s fascination with a genre that peaked commercially here in the States roughly 40 years ago. Equally as amazing is Frontiers’ impeccable way of scouring the ends of the earth to find the finest new school purveyors of this ancient sound…that is when they aren’t assembling supergroups of musicians from said genre’s initial run. AOR, melodic rock, radio rock: Whatever moniker you slap on it, there’s no denying it’s alive and well on the other side of the Atlantic. Amongst the latest of this crop is Streetlight.
Hailing from Sweden (because don’t they all?), Streetlight first hit the scene a couple years ago with their debut album, Ignition. And while that somehow missed my radar (I try to be as vigilant as possible, Serafino!), their sophomore follow up, Night Vision, quickly caught my eye with its retro album art, looking like an AOR private press obscurity circa ’85. I figured, “If this sounds anything like it looks, I’m in for a real treat of a listen, one that’ll serve as a fitting palette cleanse amidst the riveting traditional metal and various mutations of black, death, and thrash metal that make up my usual listening diet.”
Sure enough, Night Vision checks off all the AOR boxes. The songs are largely centered around nostalgic Jonathan Cain-esque keyboard parts. The guitars are hard enough for the rock crowd, but not too hard to scare off the normies, toeing the line the same way AOR act of the ’80s did. The production is squeaky clean, and I’ll be damned; there’s even a song with a woman’s name as the title (“Leanna”)! When one takes all this into consideration, it’s easy to dismiss Night Vision, and by extension Streetlight, as formulaic. However, when a formula is executed as well as it is here, one can’t deny the excellence at hand.
Old school blasts of AOR nostalgia like “Long Distance Runner”, “Captured in the Night”, and “Sleep Walk” embody everything this band stands for, sounding sonically in line with Jimi Jamison era Survivor. The balance between dreamy synths and tubular riffage couldn’t be more on point, and are only further emboldened by the smooth vocals of Johannes Häger. Guitar-laden rockers like “Late Night Hollywood” and “Straight to Hollywood” are about as heavy as the band gets, reminiscent of Night Ranger in their coke-fueled glory, while the breezy “Leanna” and anthemic “Learn to Love Again” highlight the band’s soft rock/adult contemporary side. Closing it all out is an ambitious slab of prog-AOR in “End Game”, which proves there’s more to this band than happy go lucky pop tunes! Perhaps they’ll expand upon this approach more on album #3?
Sure, there’s “nothing new” going on within the grooves of Night Vision, but if I wanted to hear something new, I’d turn on the musical garbage heap that is SiriusXM’s Octane. Night Vision is an old school sounding album played by a band of old souls if there ever was one. It’s also a cut above the usual assembly line AOR that cynics have come to expect, filled with Scandinavian passion and fire. Save for a couple moments that sound a little too close to wine mom era Chicago, Night Vision has my endorsement!
8 out of 10
Label: Frontiers Records
Genre: AOR
For fans of: Survivor, Night Ranger, Work of Art
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