I was five years old when Mr Big reached number 4 in the charts with their song ‘Romeo’. Back then the band were on the verge of making it big and were destined to become world-wide mega-stars but unfortunately for them, that never quite materialised and the band broke up soon after their only hit. The band reformed for a while in the mid to late 90’s which again saw limited success and now founder member, Jeff Pain (aka, Dicken), is reunited with another original band member Eddie Carter for another chance for Mr Big to make it big with their new album ‘Bitter Streets’.
You would think that a band whose members have been on the music scene for over 40 years would know all about the need to constantly reinvent themselves and for the music to evolve around current popular sounds and genres. Sadly Dicken and Carter, it would seem, are permanently stuck in some kind of time-warp and their new album already sounds dated. The whole album sounds like it was found in the DeLorean after one of Marty’s trips to the 80’s.
After listening to the CD a couple of times, the album is reminiscent of 80’s bands such as Air Supply, Supertramp, Foreigner, Hall & Oates and the countless other mellow rock bands we all thought had unplugged their amps and retired or confined themselves to retro 80’s stage shows decades ago.
The opening track ‘Come and Dance’ hints that the whole album will be a mellow easy listening affair and from that point of view, it doesn’t disappoint. It traipses along methodically from track to track each one lacking in any quality that could interest or stimulate. The one highlight of the album is possibly ‘God Save me from the Blues’ which is a little more modern than the preceding tracks and does have a nice guitar riff in the middle, this is where things do start to liven up and ‘Its Over’ has a nice calypso feel, but for me is little compensation for a dire and dated album.
Throughout the album, Dicken’s vocals sound strained and on the band's current single ‘Georgia’ you would be forgiven for thinking the auto-tune had packed up working. Looking on the sleeve notes Dicken is credited with doing the lion’s share of the work, perhaps when it came to laying the vocals on the tracks he was exhausted from his workload.
The album closes with a slightly more up-to-date version of ‘Romeo’, however, when you hear this 34-year-old track, you are reminded just how little distance Mr Big have come since then.
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You would think that a band whose members have been on the music scene for over 40 years would know all about the need to constantly reinvent themselves and for the music to evolve around current popular sounds and genres. Sadly Dicken and Carter, it would seem, are permanently stuck in some kind of time-warp and their new album already sounds dated. The whole album sounds like it was found in the DeLorean after one of Marty’s trips to the 80’s.
