With Slash on full touring duties with Guns N’ Roses, it is quite the accomplishment that the be-hatted one was able to find the time to do a third album.
And let’s not forget Myles Kennedy’s schedule either – this is his third record release in 2018! His first ever solo album arrived earlier in the year, along with an Alter Bridge live album.
What originated as a Slash solo project has developed into a band with the long and cumbersome name Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators.
This isn’t the kind of name that an arena public will be repeatedly chanting in full, and indeed most people do as I have done and will do for the rest of this piece: simply refer to the whole thing as Slash, treating it as a band that has taken its name from its most famous member. Because this is definitely a band, and not a Slash solo project.
Living The Dream is the band’s third album. Where the previous album World On Fire (2016) perhaps had a broader palette of styles and emotions, this one is for the most part more of a straight-ahead rock’n’roll record – but not without its twists and turns. The album has a larger-than-life arena rock attitude, but contained within the songs and performances are more intimate and highly charged moments than you might not expect.
Slash has a unique and punchy guitar sound, but the star of this album has to be Myles Kennedy who has emerged as one of the best vocalists in the business. His four-octave tenor – with its melodramatic upper and lower end vibrato – alternatively rips, whispers and soars in perfect pitch. No mere technician, however, he’s always able to tap into the emotional side of the song he is performing.
The band itself is really coming together as well, and The Conspirators are tied together tighter than a Gordian knot. Combined with Slash’s masterful licking and soloing, and Kennedy’s passionate vocals, the music soars. Chiselled and punchy, it is drenched in trademark sweeping blues flights and melodic flair; with a smattering of left-turns here and there to gloss and modernise the experience.
So how about the songs? With a band sporting such an incredible energised and tight sound, they could play the phone book (if that is even possible) and make it sound cool.
While the whole album sound great, it is when they hit the mark with the songwriting that the truly special moments emerge. There are no bad songs here, but there are two categories. About half the album’s songs are solid there and then, while the other half are incredible and prone to burrow themselves deeper into your brain.
An example of the latter is Lost Inside The Girl, which may be the best song Slash has been involved with for quite some time. It is one of few songs on the album that don’t come out of the gate all guns blazing. It has a dark spiralling riff and low-key verses, which build up into tremendous choruses.
The lyrics are clearly expressing inward confusion, but Myles deliver them with the clarity of someone who know what they’re saying to us. To top it off, the song has a solo by Slash that is just as good as any of his classic ones. If there had been a music video for this song, Slash would be standing wide-legged at the edge of the cliff with sweeping panorama shots of him playing it!
The second highlight is found in The Great Pretender (no, not a cover of that song). It is more laid-back and bluesy, and ultimately yet another slow-building epic which builds into a mighty chorus. I seem to like these – or maybe this is where the band has their strength?
Read Between The Lines takes heads deep into a funk groove, and then once you’re hooked on the beat it gradually blossoms into a flying melody.
The ballad The One You Loved Is Gone should also be mentioned. Kennedy delivers one of his best lyrics, and a highly charged emotional vocal. The ‘na-na-na’-ending brings up images of lit lighters (or is it mobile phones these days?) held high on arenas all over the world.
The band’s ability to coast across the hard rock spectrum is shown clearly on the garage spit Slow Grind, in which Kennedy’s chest-beating mentality tells of someone who will not be taken for granted. And if your bag is something a little more sensitive, then the lovely ballad ‘The One You Love’ will fit the bill nicely, where an emotional singer like Kennedy just can’t do any wrong.
Ultimately this is a solid album overall with some fantastic peaks and no dips to speak of. Stylistically, Living The Dream does not signal any stylistic changes – they pretty much stick to the formula which worked so well on previous efforts. And guess what – it works like a charm here, too!
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