SUNSET AND VINE (E)

Though bearing different names like Trojan, these five people now known as Shy are very experienced musicians. Their first record was Once Bitten, Twice Shy recorded in 1983. The band toured with Twelfth Night, Magnum and Queensrÿche, just to name a few. The founder members are vocalist Tony Mills and guitarist Steve Harris, who wrote practically all the music on Sunset And Vine. The production was done by the band and Andy Faulkner and sounds quite okay. If you had put this record in my player and I wouldn’t have known anything about these guys, I would have guessed it was either Journey or a Journey-tribute band. Mill’s vocals resemble those of Steve Perry strikingly well and the solos played by Harris are good but they miss that touch of brilliance of Neil Schon's guitar playing. Because this AOR can hardly be categorised as ‘progressive’ music I will conclude by saying that this is very much Journey-like sounding album and it’s also obvious - in a track like Walk Through Fire - that Harris also listened to Tom Scholz (Boston) a lot. Sunset And Vine contains really good AOR-music, but I’ve heard it all before.