From: leo@ph.tn.tudelft.nl (Leo Breebaart)
Newsgroups: rec.music.reviews,rec.music.misc
Subject: Kronto Review: Honeymoon Suite - Monsters Under The Bed
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 92 12:57:00 GMT
Reply-To: leo@ph.tn.tudelft.nl
Followup-To: rec.music.misc
Organization: Delft University of Technology


Honeymoon Suite - Monsters Under The Bed (1991)
WEA 9031-75532-2
55:37 min, 12 tracks
Produced by: Paul Northfield and Honeymoon Suite

I suppose you could call listening to bands like Honeymoon Suite a 
guilty pleasure. Except I don't feel much guilt about it, thank you 
very much. Sure, there is more to life than white teenager male 
oriented party rock, and even within the genre people are finally 
moving in new directions, exploring funk and other black influences, 
or sometimes just reaching back to the past.

But even in this decade there are a number of bands who still insist 
on playing their traditional heavy rock with soaring guitars, 
bombastic production and melodic vocals. Their audience consists 
mostly of American teenage boys and pre-teenage girls, and the more 
serious music lover (possessor of higher than average musical 
intelligence? :-) usually loathes these groups immensely. Often not 
without reason, since at the bottom of the barrel you find 'poser' 
groups like Poison (unfortunately still going strong) and 
Cinderella. Then again: at the top you can find groups such as the, 
in my opinion heavily underrated, Night Ranger (unfortunately now 
defunct) and Aerosmith.

Honeymoon Suite is a Canadian entry in this spectrum, and can be 
placed quite close to the top, as far as I am concerned. The trio 
writes very melodic, fairly heavy rock songs, at times obviously 
inspired by Bon Jovi, at other times reminding me of the 
aforementioned Night Ranger. They have been around for a 
considerable time though, I only picked up this album because I 
remembered their excellent 1985 (?) single 'Feel It Again'. Since 
then they have, by the way, become a lot heavier and less poppy.

Musically, they are uniformly excellent. Singer Johnnie Dee has a 
pleasant, powerful, if somewhat indistinctive voice. More 
interesting is guitar-player Derry Grehan, who stays away from the 
obligatory solo's, but instead wields a mean and dirty rhythm guitar 
that gives the material an extra edge (e.g. 'Say You Don't Know 
Me'). He really is a terrific guitar player. Third member Ray Coburn 
plays keyboards (nice smooth organ sounds, mostly), but is musically 
not that much of a presence. Much less in fact than the hired-hand 
rhythm section consisting of Steve Webster and Jorn Andersen. These 
guys really kick ass (listen to the bass line on 'How Long' for 
instance), and form a truly driving force behind the songs.

The songs themselves are strong. The CD opens and closes with two 
extremely good offerings: 'Say You Don't Know Me' and 'All I 
Wanted'. Between these two extremes, there are a number of lesser 
brothers (the Beatles homage 'The Road' and the overlong 'Next To 
You'), but also a few other excellent tracks ('Little Sister', 
'Miracle'). The production is of course what you'd expect these 
days: lots of dynamics and space and volume. sure, it all sounds the 
same, but as long as there are good songs underneath, it works...

Concluding, I can really recommend this album to anyone who enjoys 
an occasional foray into the genre. Honeymoon Suite are good 
songwriters, and if they sound a bit Bon Jovi-ish now and again, 
they are fortunately completely lacking his 'Last American Cowboy' 
attitude, which makes all the difference. In a wornout genre where 
mediocrity reigns, Honeymoon Suite is not so much a breath of fresh 
air as well as great distillers of the oxygen still left in the 
supposedly stale atmosphere.



-- 
Leo Breebaart  (leo @ ph.tn.tudelft.nl)
Xref: sparky rec.music.reviews:194 rec.music.misc:13639