Stephen Pearcy - Smash

Published January 21 2017

*=Staff's pick	I Know I'm Crazy Ten Miles Wide* Shut Down Baby Dead Roses Lollipop Hit Me With A Bullet Rain Want Too Much* What Do Ya Think Jamie I Can't Take It Passion Infinity Summer's End

Genre	Hard Rock	Stephen Pearcy	Vocals
Tracks	13	Erik Ferentinos	Guitar
Running time	47 Min.	Chris Hager	Guitar
Label	Frontiers Music	Matt Thorn	Bass
Release	January 27, 2017	Greg D'Angelo	Drums
Country	USA	-	Keyboard
Producer	---
Similar artists	---

Ratt's founder and frontman Stephen Pearcy puts out his fourth solo record and clearly he misses the benefit of co-writing songs with his companions in that band. From time to time, even not necessarily in the actual music, but in terms of vocal melodies, it's quite reminiscent of his main band's appearance, which naturally is because of the fact that he has a certain style that he seems fairly comfortable with and prefers to cling on to.

Not that Mr. Pearcy really owns a beautiful voice, whereas his performance is far from fascinating and actually he's not even singing, in the true sense of the word, but frequently rather talks his way through the songs. The man never had a first class technique to begin with, but always had a unique character that added something identifiable to the songs and I think that the girls in the 80's probably heard a sexy and alluring tone in his voice as well.

In a way this record kind of contains songs in 2 different styles; the songs similar to Ratt stuff and the ones that simply diverge from that direction. In the first category there are some good moments indeed, even if most of those songs sound like remains from a late night Ratt session and would probably be considered filler material if they were to be put on one of that band's albums. In the second category those good moments are very rare though and most of those songs go by either sort of unnoticed or with an invalid result, making this record an uneven one quality-wise, in my opinion.

Obviously, hardly any song is able to get me into a veritable rock mode. Sometimes there's a good verse, at times there's a strong chorus line or maybe just a bridge or something else that I pay attention to, but I can't really find any songs that are good all the way from start to end. The overall sound bothers me a little as well, since the quality is somewhat poor for being a product of today and the standard varies to some extent over the record for some reason too.

If you happen to like Ratt you might wanna check out this work too, even though it might turn out disappointing if you would compare it to pretty much everything Pearcy has been able to create together with those boys. You will probably dig 3 or 4 songs and if you think that is satisfactory enough for a purchase, just open up your wallet, pick out your credit card and go for it.