Bailey
Long Way Down
Frontiers Music Srl
2014
Nigel Bailey recently made his big league debut, in Three Lions, alongside Dare alumni Vinny Burns (Dare, Ten, Asia) on guitar, Greg Morgan (Dare, Ten) on drums, while he handled vocals and bass, quite capably too, resulting in one of the best albums, of the past few years in the melodic rock genre, thanks to the great combination of the talents of those three gentlemen.
Apparently Nigel had spent a good portion of the previous years’ performing in pubs and honing his crafts and presumably he had a number of songs written as well, so not too long after his Three Lions debut comes, an eponymous vehicle, with a band made up from the “usual suspects” Frontiers seems to be using more or less as a “house band” for various projects, ie Alessandro Del Vecchio on keys and Alessandro Mori on drums, with the guitar duties shared between Bailey and Mario Percudani as well.
Bailey’s debut, is decidedly harder edged than the Three Lions one and the songwriting is somewhat less impressive and distinctive than theirs, even on the mellower numbers, where because of the vocals, the comparisons are more forthcoming. And unfortunately if one was to consider the quality of the guitar ideas, nothing here quite measures up that well with what Vinny Burns had been perfecting for quite a while and ended up in the TL’s debut. Things are way more tame and generic here and after a few worthwhile cuts like the spirited but slightly clichéd opener “Feed the Flames”, the even more cliché, pomp rock of “In the Name of the King” which however seems to work well enough because of its decent chorus and Bailey’s nice vocal performance, the typical hard rock “Dirty Little Secret” that sounds a little too “generic”, then probably the next song that really makes an impression is “Spend the Night” a semi acoustic piece of balladry that works well in the context of the album. The rest of the songs are not bad, but they seem to have a hard time to sound wholly convincing…
I suppose it’s not a bad album but it’s slightly above average imho…
Apparently Nigel had spent a good portion of the previous years’ performing in pubs and honing his crafts and presumably he had a number of songs written as well, so not too long after his Three Lions debut comes, an eponymous vehicle, with a band made up from the “usual suspects” Frontiers seems to be using more or less as a “house band” for various projects, ie Alessandro Del Vecchio on keys and Alessandro Mori on drums, with the guitar duties shared between Bailey and Mario Percudani as well.
Bailey’s debut, is decidedly harder edged than the Three Lions one and the songwriting is somewhat less impressive and distinctive than theirs, even on the mellower numbers, where because of the vocals, the comparisons are more forthcoming. And unfortunately if one was to consider the quality of the guitar ideas, nothing here quite measures up that well with what Vinny Burns had been perfecting for quite a while and ended up in the TL’s debut. Things are way more tame and generic here and after a few worthwhile cuts like the spirited but slightly clichéd opener “Feed the Flames”, the even more cliché, pomp rock of “In the Name of the King” which however seems to work well enough because of its decent chorus and Bailey’s nice vocal performance, the typical hard rock “Dirty Little Secret” that sounds a little too “generic”, then probably the next song that really makes an impression is “Spend the Night” a semi acoustic piece of balladry that works well in the context of the album. The rest of the songs are not bad, but they seem to have a hard time to sound wholly convincing…
I suppose it’s not a bad album but it’s slightly above average imho…