ALBUM REVIEW: The Night Flight Orchestra - Give Us The Moon
Put your fist in the air and rock on.
Hearing the first few singles for Give Us The Moon didn’t make me think The Night Flight Orchestra’s latest would amount to much at all. After all, how many 80’s hair metal-worshipping songs can you make and have them all be worth hearing? Turns out, a lot more than I thought. The true joys of this album are hidden beyond the lead singles, and here the band gives us some of their best Journey-inspired fist-in-the-air anthems to date.
No, Give Us The Moon doesn’t offer a whole lot beyond what we’ve heard from this group before. What elevates it is the level of understanding Björn Strid and his bandmates have for the genres they love to emulate. He knows when to kick his vocals into high gear at the perfect moment, like on the true opener “Stratus”. Those big, boisterous electric guitars and titanic synth lines are irresistibly cheesy, and you can’t help but grin as Strid shouts his way towards the moon. Further highlights like the epic choruses of “Miraculous” drop everything but the synth keys and vocals at its climax, making something Steve Lukather or Tom Scholz would be proud of. These are silly songs that know they’re silly, and they’re all the better for it.
Another thing I think The Night Flight Orchestra understands really well is how to make an album full of Kiss and Foreigner worship full of highlights. There’s no time to dawdle here, with each successive track keeping the energy of this trip to the moon alive and well. Like I noted before, the deeper cuts are where this record soars. Give me ragers like “Melbourne, May I?” or “A Paris Point Of View” any day of the week over a single like “Shooting Velvet”. Even lesser moments have memorable moments, like the mostly dull “Paloma” ending on a swell synthed-out note.
At nearly an hour long, there’s a definite level of overindulgence on this record. It’s very close to too much of a good thing. Closer “Stewardess, Empress, Hot Mess (And The Captain Of Pain)” is as melodramatic as its title might suggest, and at almost 8 whole minutes, it pushes the lengths of what the band can do to the brink. Yet it’s worth getting to that point with how much damn fun so much of this record is. Every corny synth line, every over-the-top chorus and every guitar solo is worth pointing towards the cosmos and screaming along. Just don’t expect a lot more than you hear, and you’ll have a fine time whipping around that imaginary mullet on your head.
Verdict: 7.8/10
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