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You’d be a fool to miss out on its many wonderful merits
2013 has already thrown up quite a few albums that (potentially) will make my end of year top ten. Definitely joining those albums will be this brand new release from Stuart Smith’s Heaven & Earth. The album itself is a huge sounding retro hard rock juggernaut, with enough nods towards Rainbow, Whitesnake, Bad Company and Foreigner to keep anyone who reads this magazine more than happy. I personally found myself grinning like a loon as I first listened to ‘Dig’ because the sound on it is so warm and familiar, that you can’t help falling in love with the music and performances you find throughout its nearly sixty minutes duration.
Before I get to the songs I must first mention the vocals of Joe Retta (The Sweet/solo) who comes across as a mixture of Joe Lynn Turner, Paul Rodgers and Graham Bonnet (think ‘Down To Earth’ era Rainbow) and on whose performance this whole album rests. If you then consider that he is taking over from the likes of JLT, Paul Shortino and Kelly Keeling, he really delivers the goods in spades. Try the ‘Gates Of Babylon’-like opener ‘Victorious’ with its sweeping guitar refrains and riotous Hammond organ runs (prevalent throughout this album) and tell me you’re not listening to a class act. Then following this scorching start we move on to the rocky ‘No Money, No Love’, a track full of attitude and verve; then it’s the turn of glorious ballad ‘I Don’t Know What Love Is’ where Joe Retta sings like his heart and very soul were breaking apart. ‘House Of Blues’ follows and once again it sees Retta and guitarist Stuart Smith combining to produce a full blown melodic retro-masterpiece and with ’Waiting For The World To End’, ‘Rock & Roll Does’ and ‘Good Times’ all joining in just for the fun of it. Yet even with all this wonderful melodic rock floating around it’s the John Denver country/folk influenced ‘A Day Like Today’ that I love the most, mainly (again) because of Joe Retta’s wonderful emotive and different sounding vocal performance.
‘Dig’ is one of those rare “all killer, no filler” albums that come along only every now and then and you’d be a fool to miss out on its many wonderful merits. Is ‘Dig’ one of the best melodic hard rock albums of the last few years? You decide. I already have!
Ian Johnson