Stone Orange
The Dreamcatcher
Street Symphonies Records
2013
Stone Orange is a hard rock band from Ljubljana, Slovenia. As I started writing this review for the band’s new album “The Dreamcatcher” I promised myself not to use the sentence “they sound OK for a band from Slovenia”.
“The Dreamcatcher” is a pure and straightforward hard rock record with absolutely no surprises for the listener. “Broken Man”, the first song there, sets the tone for the whole recording. Heavy but at the same time melodic guitar riffs, clean-cut hard rock style of vocals with the occasional choral backing vocals and a steady drum rhythm. It’s a recipe that has been tried out so many times, by so many bands that you know that 9 times out of 10 it will work well enough to carry a whole album. “The Dreamcatcher” belongs to the 9 cases where it works, in my opinion, thanks to the guitar playing abilities of Tomo Jurca. You see, instead of just sticking to the typical high-pitched guitar solo right before the last chorus, each and every single song in “The Dreamcatcher” has those little playful guitar pinches every now end then in order to keep things interesting. But` sometimes that is not enough to make the song any good.
The problem with the record is not that it is bad, because it’s not bad. The problem with it is that it is mediocre most times. I find that it does not keep the listener engaged enough, I mean I could have pressed the stop button at any point and it would have made no difference to me. Even the order and the style of the songs was predictable. “It Keeps on Raining”, the ballad of the album is placed right at the middle of the record; and “The Age of Stars”, the acoustic ballad is right at the end. The only unexpected thing there is “Frozen Sky”, an instrumental music piece that features a wind background effect, a newscaster talking about the end of the world by a giant asteroid and a sweet-sounding guitar.
In my opinion, the highlights of “The Dreamcatcher” are “Rockin’ & Rollin’” which is a little more aggressive and therefore more “rockin’”, and “Whites of Their Eyes” where the guitar player seems to have been given absolute freedom.
“The Dreamcatcher” is a pure and straightforward hard rock record with absolutely no surprises for the listener. “Broken Man”, the first song there, sets the tone for the whole recording. Heavy but at the same time melodic guitar riffs, clean-cut hard rock style of vocals with the occasional choral backing vocals and a steady drum rhythm. It’s a recipe that has been tried out so many times, by so many bands that you know that 9 times out of 10 it will work well enough to carry a whole album. “The Dreamcatcher” belongs to the 9 cases where it works, in my opinion, thanks to the guitar playing abilities of Tomo Jurca. You see, instead of just sticking to the typical high-pitched guitar solo right before the last chorus, each and every single song in “The Dreamcatcher” has those little playful guitar pinches every now end then in order to keep things interesting. But` sometimes that is not enough to make the song any good.
The problem with the record is not that it is bad, because it’s not bad. The problem with it is that it is mediocre most times. I find that it does not keep the listener engaged enough, I mean I could have pressed the stop button at any point and it would have made no difference to me. Even the order and the style of the songs was predictable. “It Keeps on Raining”, the ballad of the album is placed right at the middle of the record; and “The Age of Stars”, the acoustic ballad is right at the end. The only unexpected thing there is “Frozen Sky”, an instrumental music piece that features a wind background effect, a newscaster talking about the end of the world by a giant asteroid and a sweet-sounding guitar.
In my opinion, the highlights of “The Dreamcatcher” are “Rockin’ & Rollin’” which is a little more aggressive and therefore more “rockin’”, and “Whites of Their Eyes” where the guitar player seems to have been given absolute freedom.